I'm not a sourdough virgin any more!

Aussie in Germany

After being initially inspired by a friend's photo on Facebook I decided to try my hand at baking my own sourdough loaf.  

I firstly must thank all the friendly, helpful and informative professional and home Bakers out there who have posted tips, recipes, and advice on the net!

I started (it really is hard to write a blog post like this without a truck load of un-intentional puns!) my journey around 10 days ago, following the Sourdom's fantastic step by step guide.  After a few days of feeding it was bubbling away nicely and had developed a nice yeasty, slightly fruity smell.  I continued to feed for 8 days in total before my impatience got the better of me and I decided to embark on my first loaf.

For my first loaf I decided to use shiao-ping's post, following the 3, 2, 1 method but then incorporated  some techniques from Sourdom.

Following the advice of many posts I decided to keep detailed notes of my adventure.

My inaugural organic sourdough loaf was made with:

  • 140g Starter - 100% Hydration, 15% Rye/35% Wholemeal, 50% water)
  • 420g Flour - 84g Rye, 336g of White type 1150 (strong)
  • 280g Filtered water
  • 10g Sea salt

If my calculations are correct it was a 71% Hydration loaf. 

My Room temp ranges between 18/19 degree Celsius and my starter was at its peak (6 hours after feeding)

I gave it a rough mix and left to Autolyse for 20 mins and then added the salt and gave a 10 sec knead every 10 mins for the next half hour.   From then I gave it a double letter fold every 45 mins for the next 2.5 hours before shaping and putting in a Banneton (Boule) covered with a teatowel and plastic bag and into the fridge.

The next day, after 14 hrs in the fridge i took it out and let it rest on bench at room temp 18 degree C for 1.5 hrs.

Preheated the Oven to 250 Celsius but by the time I'd got the loaf onto the preheated oven tray it had dropped to 200.  I also threw a small cup of water on the floor of the oven to create some steam.

It got a little knocked around due to my fumbling around between taking out of the Banneton and putting in the oven.

For a first attempt with a relatively young starter I have to say that I am very happy with the result.  Taste was great with a nice crunchy crust.  It was on the dense side which I will endeavor to correct with future attempts.

If you have any ideas on how I can improve things, please let me know.

Happy Baking,

Charlie

 

PS - Can someone please explain to me how the photos at the top of the post got there - Only one of them is mine and I am at a loss to work out where they came from and how they got there!!!!! 

 

 

Replies

farinam's picture
farinam 2012 April 25

Hello Aussie,

I think you will find that practice will bring about a great improvement.

Stick with one simple recipe until you are happy with your technique and results. Then you can branch out and try different recipes and methods. If you try too much too early you can easily become frustrated and head off down blind alleys.

As far as the stray pictures go, I am not sure how they got there but they seem to have been picked at random from the Photos pages - one of them comes from page 3.

Maybe Maedi will have an answer.

Keep on bakin'

Farinam

Maedi's picture
Maedi 2012 April 26

Hey Aussie

Just to let you know that I'm on the case in regards to the random photo issue, an odd one indeed, cheers.

Maedi

Karniecoops's picture
Karniecoops 2012 April 27

 Looks like you lost your virginity just fine Aussie! Nice looking bread :o)

Whereabouts in Germany are you living?

Karniecoops's picture
Karniecoops 2012 April 27

 Looks like you lost your virginity just fine Aussie! Nice looking bread :o)

Whereabouts in Germany are you living?

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