lots and lots of sourdough–my routine

I seem to have settled into a bit of a (flexible) routine with my sourdough! I have yet to try a new recipe, as I continue to get a feel for this one. I’m also anticipating a shift in the process once the weather really turns to fall/winter and the ambient temp in my apartment drops a bit. (Let’s be honest, though, in a Brooklyn apartment with radiator heat it’s never very cold, and it’s completely out of my control.) Here’s what I do (this got so long!).

The day before I want to bake bread, I begin this process.

1. Take Constance out of the fridge and let sit for about an hour. During this time I do a bunch of arithmetic, asking myself the following questions to determine how much to feed her:
   • How many loaves of bread will I be making? (240 g per loaf)
   • What else might I want to make with the starter? (pizza for dinner? more crackers? most of those recipes are fine with discard, but I figure they’re also fine with at-peak starter too)
2. I add up all the amounts of starter I’ll need, add 113 g (so I have Constance to put back in the fridge), then round generously up to a nice whole number. This is the amount of starter I will want mixed up.
3. After the hour at room temp, I put a container on my scale, zero it out, and pour all of Constance into the container (I use a 2-Quart container, as I consistently make at least 2 loaves and this gives me room for that—and even a third loaf if I want—with plenty of room for the starter to double.)
4. I subtract the weight of Constance from the total amount of starter I’m going to need. I take the difference, divide it in two, and then add that amount of water and flour to the starter. Mix it up well and let it sit for about 5 hours.
5. So far, in 5 hours it’s been fully doubled, so it’s ready to be put into baking! If it wasn’t doubled I’d give it another hour. If in that time it still wasn’t doubled . . . I don’t know what I’d do. I haven’t had that issue yet.

Next up, the actual bread process. To prepare I get out my big 6-quart container, scale, bread flour, whole wheat flour, and my room-temp filtered water. (We leave our Brita on the counter at all times.)

1. Now I start mixing up all the things I’m planning to make. Into the big container goes the amount of starter I need for all the bread I’m making. Then the water, and I mix it up so it’s all incorporated. Then I weigh in the flours. I am still using this recipe, in the scaled-down size that I wrote about here.
2. Per the recipe I let it sit for about 35 minutes, loosely covered (I’ve called this autolyse, but I’ve since read that a true autolyse is done without starter in the mix, so technically this is just, um, a sitting before adding salt.) While it’s resting I weigh out the salt for the bread. Then I weigh out and prep anything else I’m going to bake. Finally, I weigh out my 113 g of Constance and I feed her 113 g AP flour and 113 g water. I put her back in her container and let her sit at room temp for about an hour before putting her back in the fridge for another week! If there’s a little extra starter left, I chuck it.
3. Once the timer goes off, I come back and pinch in the salt, give it some stretch-and-folds, and then put the lid gently on and set a million timers: I set a timer for every 30 minutes for the next 3.5 hours.
4. Every time the timer goes off, I wet my hand under the tap, and I do a series of stretch-and-folds. I love doing them but I try not to go overboard, but I do more than 4 as I rotate around. You can definitely feel the dough get stronger and rise more as the time goes on. In the last half hour I prep my proofing containers: my banneton and a normal round Ikea bowl, each with a tea towel in it, sprinkled with a 50/50 mix of rice and regular flour.
5. When the last timer goes off, I shape the loaves. I split the dough up by weight (I’m terrible at eyeing it) and shape each loaf on the counter. I plunk the loaves into the proofing containers, fold the towel over them, cover with plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge for an overnight rise.

The next day, it’s time to bake. Generally I’ll have waited around 17-19 hours from when I put it in until I bake. I have also done 13 hours. I do a little press-test and the dough always comes back, slowly, which I guess means it could go for even longer, but I’m happy with the bread I get out of this so I’m not messing with it too much yet.

1. I put my Le Creuset Dutch oven (oval shaped) and my Lodge Combo Cooker into the oven on a middle rack, with the other rack on the level directly below that, and preheat the oven to 500°F. This takes about half an hour.
2. While the oven is preheating, I cut parchment paper to approximate size (one an oval, one a circle) and then crumple them up repeatedly, until the paper is more flexible. I got this idea when I copyedited this cookbook, and it’s so simple and so smart! (Actually, it’s best if I cut the parchment before I put the vessels in the oven so that I can get more accurate on sizing, but eyeballing it is fine.)
3. Things happen quickly in this next step, so I try prepare everything (I always forget something): I get down the AP flour and a small sifter/strainer. I have my lame handy, and my peel out. If I’m going to do spinny cuts, I get down my cake decorating turntable.
4. I get one loaf out and open up the towel. I place the parchment over the bowl/banneton, then my peel, and I flip the whole thing over so the dough and towel comes out. It’s always been super easy to just lift the towel off the dough.
5. Dust with AP flour and smooth it out. Cut boldly, going pretty deep with the cuts if I want them to really show up.
6. I don these heatproof gloves to make touching the Dutch oven and combo cooker easier. Pull a vessel out of the oven, remove the top, slide the dough on the parchment in, put the lid back on, and put it in the oven. Put a large cookie sheet on the lower rack directly below the vessels. Reduce the oven temp to 450°F.
7. Repeat with the second loaf.
8. Set a timer for about 32 minutes. I’m playing with this number and think I could start going a touch longer.
9. When the timer goes off, remove the lids. Ooh and ahh at the shape the bread is taking. Set a timer for about 19 minutes.
10. Take the bread out and marvel!

Once I typed it out it was clear it was so very many steps, but all it really requires is time spent at home. The 4 hours of bulk fermentation is the most annoying, because I need to be present and available regularly. However, I’ve seen some recipes where you do ALL the stretch-and-folds in the first hour and then let it sit at room temp for bulk fermentation for a few hours before putting in the fridge, and I’m thinking of trying that soon.

The bread has been so delicious of late, with a nice soft crumb. I think it might be on the slightly underbaked side, hence my comment about increasing the time it cooks while covered (if left to cook longer uncovered it gets very very dark, and I’m into the dark crust but not too dark). No significant complaints, though, and the oven spring has been amazing!

sourdough mania continues

I decided to make a slew of loaves to bring on our family beach week vacation, so in the week preceding vacation I baked up a storm. Some were made to become garlic bread, and others will be offered up for slicing to go with cheese and meats in our traditional appetizers.

Since baking the last two loaves, I’ve gone to the Container Store and bought a pretty glass container for Constance to live in and a combo cooker by Lodge to partner with my Dutch oven. It’s round, so it will more easily accommodate the round loaves I’ve been making, and I decided it was just that bit more useful than a round Dutch oven. I’m still bummed that Broadway Panhandler in Manhattan closed (and the space is still empty! It’s been years!), because their annual Le Creuset sale was amazing.

All this to say that I only felt confident making 2 loaves at a time. On Sunday I fed Constance almost straight out of the fridge and 5 hours later the starter had risen significantly but not entirely doubled. I was antsy so I forged ahead with my scaled-down Hobb’s House Baker No-Knead Bread recipe, but in the future I’ll either be sure to let Constance sit out for at least 1 hour at room temp before feeding or I’ll give it an additional hour to double. (Either way, it needs just about 1 more hour, so guess it just depends on how my morning is going.)

I had inexplicable trouble forming these into loaves. The first one gave me so much trouble that I left the second in the bowl for an additional round of stretch and fold. It was better after that but not as easy as it had been in the past. One thing that I’m not sure makes a difference: I used water straight from the tap, because I wanted it to be warm, instead of the room-temp filtered water we have out. They say NYC water is some of the best tap water around, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt too much.

Based on some descriptions I read online, I decided not to take the dough out of the fridge in advance, taking it instead directly from the fridge to the parchment paper (this time, I cut the parchment to match the vessels it’d bake in, and I still crumpled it up a few times). I debated how to cut and went with this zig-zag with wheat stalk for both, based on a design I’d seen on Instagram. Immediately after scoring the round one I remembered I was supposed to dust it with flour first. Oh well!

I baked these for 25 minutes with the lid on, then 20 minutes with it off. They got nice and dark and had okay oven spring. It’s clear I’m not scoring deep enough where I want the deep cuts, but it’s not terrible. I sliced into the round one because it’s my bread for the week here at home, and again the crumb felt kind of “wet” to me. I resolved to give more time in the covered DO the next day.

While the oven was preheating on Monday, I mixed up more starter to make two more loaves. Again I mixed the loaves separately, and this time I used filtered water. After the autolyse, I added diced dry sun-dried tomatoes (the kind not packed in oil) to one of the bowls. I say “dry” sun-dried tomatoes, but these were very pliable and moist; maybe if they’d once been completely dry they were now more like “rehydrated.” (I found them in the fancy meats, olives, etc. area of my grocery store.) I guessed at how much to dice, chopping them up pretty small until the pile looked right to me. Because I wanted to be able to re-create this in the future, I measured my pile: It was a generous 1/2 cup. After folding the salt in, I dumped the tomatoes on the dough and folded them for a bit, too.

After my difficulty the night before I gave an extra half-hour to the bulk fermentation and an additional stretch and fold. The dough was MUCH stronger by the end, I could feel it—it felt as if the dough were pushing against me when I tried to do the fold, it was so leavened. Forming them into the loaves was not hard at all; I’d been wary of working with the dough with the sun-dried tomato bits but it gave me no trouble.

Because of a mid-morning dentist appointment and an extreme aversion to waking up much earlier than I have to, these got a longer proof in the fridge—probably around 17 hours, instead of the 14 the ones the day before had received. Like Monday, I took them straight from the fridge to my pre-cut pieces of crumpled parchment paper. This time, I went with a bold angled slash in order to get an ear (I think I’m obsessed with the ears), then some perpendicular wheat stalks, inspired by this source material. I did the same design on both; I’m enjoying seeing how the designs look on round versus banneton shapes.

I. Love. These. Loaves. SO MUCH. The ears are amazing, the design shows up so nicely, and it’s clear my slashing has gotten better. I baked these for 30 minutes with the lids on, then about 20 minutes for the sun-dried tomato and 22 for the round with the lid off. The moment they went into the oven I could smell the sun-dried tomatoes, and I was afraid they were burning, but it looks okay in the final loaf if you peer inside the ear. Later when I cut into it I was quite pleased:

Again while the loaves were baking on Tuesday, I had starter proofing for another pair of loaves. Because this back-to-back-to-back breadmaking has been really good practice, I decided to mix all the dough together at once, then I’d divide the dough when shaping the loaves—might as well give that a whirl. After 3.5 hours of bulk fermentation WHOA was the dough a strong, resistant, puffball! I think I did a pretty terrible job halving it (one of them looks far smaller than the other!) but I didn’t have too much difficulty with the shaping.

These proofed in the fridge for about 17 hours, like the ones from the day before. I went more bold in the cuts, trying something different. (Seems I only photographed the round loaf.)

With 5 minutes left in their bake times, Jason mentioned that they smelled more strongly than usual. I shrugged and said I wasn’t sure why. And then I realized and went screaming racing into the kitchen: “I FORGOT TO REDUCE THE TEMP WHEN I PUT THEM IN THE OVENNNNN!” So I yanked the loaves out of the oven and they were for sure more dark than I’d want. I let them cool, wrapped them up, and brought them to the beach—and when I cut into it later I found it was juuust fine on the inside. The crust had a lot more flavor, veering toward bitter, but it was great with cheeses.

A pretty successful six loaves of bread. Which was far far too much bread for even our family. My mom even took a whole loaf home with her!

 

sourdough loaves 2 and 3

Puffed with confidence after my first loaf, I decided to alter the recipe. I did some research about baker’s percentages and was able to scale the recipe down just a bit, so as to make an ever-so-slightly smaller loaf that might fit better in my Dutch oven. My new version of the Hobb’s House Bakery No-Knead Bread has the following ingredients:

240 g starter, at its peak
272 g water*
80 g King Arthur Flour Whole Wheat Flour
320 g King Arthur Flour Bread Flour
8 g salt

* I’ve since read Flour Water Salt Yeast, and that book details at length that final dough temperature is the most important thing; he alters the temperature of the water to achieve the right final temp. I used room-temp water and had great results. Then I tried using slightly hotter tap water to see what would happen, and the final dough temp was much higher than he detailed and the final loaves were, to my mind, not as great—perhaps because I used water straight from the tap?

I set out to make my second and third loaves because, so pumped up with my achievements as I was, I determined to make a loaf as a host gift for my friend’s parents, who were hosting us the coming weekend. While I know that the Tartine recipe calls for mixing up the dough and then splitting it into two loaves, and thus I knew that doubling it would have been straightforward, I was feeling tentative and decided to mix each loaf up separately. This meant I could do more stretch-and-folds, though, so I was not complaining; I love that part of the process!

 

I started the process around 9 am that day, feeding Constance a huge meal so that I would have at least 480 g of starter to use at the end. Around 2 she was more than doubled (I’d had an unexpected work call that meant I couldn’t check on her at 1), so I started the autolyse. I let bulk fermentation go for about 3 hours, and had no issues forming the loaves to put into the vessels for proofing.

Back when our starters were just wee babes, I bought Caro and me matching cane bannetons. I liked the longer shape and figured it would fit more nicely in my oval Dutch oven. After my shall-not-be-named disaster with a loaf sticking to the banneton, I did some research and settled on using a tea towel dusted with a 50/50 mix of bread flour and rice flour to prevent sticking. That has definitely done the trick; I’ve had no issues peeling the tea towel off after inverting. With two loaves in the mix and only one banneton, I employed just a normal ceramic bowl from Ikea for the second loaf. I’d give a round one in the DO a try.

I spent the evening once the loaves were in the fridge (they went in around 7) debating on my cutting patterns. I scanned Instagram and decided leafy shapes, rather than the stalks of wheat, would be what I’d try. The next morning I got one loaf out of the fridge around 8 and let it sit for 2 hours; for the last half hour I preheated the oven with my DO inside. Using a technique that was detailed in a cookbook I recently edited, I balled up my parchment paper 5 times or so in order to soften it a bit. This helped a lot for the parchment not interfering with the bread’s shape. Once I put the loaf in the oven I took out the second to come to room temp. For both, I remembered to sprinkle with flour before cutting. Cutting was not very easy; the lame dragged. But I persisted.

And I was decently pleased.

The long one was baked first, and the moment it came out I realized I needed to score more deeply, so I attempted that on the second. I love the rich dark color they got. The crumb was generally nice but maybe slightly “wet” feeling? And whoa talk about a big bubble. It was in the DO for 25, uncovered for 20 or 25.

Cutting the loaf straight out of the oven is like cutting down a tree with a switchblade—my serrated knife is clearly not up to the task. The next day the crust has softened enough that it’s not such an aerobic effort. We gave the round loaf away and it was much appreciated!

post-script: Jason helped me document the whole process, and Google later made me a video of it! It’s too big to upload, sadly, but you can see it here.