Hello everyone!
Today was my second attempt at sourdough bread. Some thimgs I am pleased with and some things I am not pleased with. I'll start with THIS:
Planning this morning. The birds were loud. Good to hear life outside. Seriously, though, not a lot of things can wake me up at 6am. I must be excited about this, hahaha. Here's the specs:
408g Whole Wheat Starter (204g filtered tap water/204g Whole wheat flour)
476g Bread Flour
306g Water (75%)
14g Salt (2%)
for two 600g loaves.
Weight before bake: ~ 580g each
Getting better at organizing this stuff. Slowly. The dough seemed to have dried out slightly in the refridgerator, maybe next time I'll use cling wrap instead of a cloth during cold bulk ferment to retain moisture? It had nearly doubled in size though, so the yeast must be doing well. My starter is a couple of weeks old now and tasting better than ever. I switched it to whole wheat with supplemental bread flour after harvests to allow the yeast better movement. It's approx. 90% whole wheat. Wait a second, none of you have met Mr. Smith, have you?
This is Mr. Smith. He's doing pretty well. I feed him twice daily currently. When I think the yeast are stong enough I'll probably start refrigerating him. His flavor and smell have improved immensely since I switched him to whole wheat flour, though it seems like the yeast have a harder time moving because of the extra plant matter in the flour. He doesn't rise quite as high as he did when it was 50% whole wheat, but he does still rise quite a bit, nearly doubling in a few hours after feeding at 75 Degrees F.
Anyway, back to the process. All ingredients were mixed thoroughly by hand and autolysed for 1 hour at room temp. I did 6 Stretch and Folds at 20 minute intervals then transferred the dough to the fridge in an oiled bowl.
This morning I got the cold dough (38 F) out and let it set for 2 hours at room temp. I then divided it and did my first Tension Pull, following with 3 more tension pulls at 10 minute intervals.
I put the shaped dough into a bowl lined with floured linen and then put it back in the fridgd for 1 hour.
I then preheated the oven to 500 F with my dutch oven inside it.
I did a finger poke test and the dough sprang back in about 2 full seconds with a little give still. I wasn't sure if this was proofed enough or not, but decided to go with baking. I took the dough out and dropped it into the dutch oven, trying not to manhandle it. I sprinkled one with flour and scored it, and on the other one I did a (late) eggwash. Here are the results: 
The outside didn't look bad, and i know these were small loaves, so the oven spring was actually pretty good. Final weight:
~470g each.
The ear turned out really nice. I sharpened my paring knife just to score these this morning. Lol. I'm moderately pleased with the look of the outside of these loafs, but I know there's a lot I can improve on.
Here's the crumb:
What I need to work on (please feel free to correct me and advise me):
- I think that these were underproofed, maybe a longer final proofing time that's not in the fridge
- There is unincorporated dough in the middle, possibly from undermixing or not kneading enough?
- The crumb is dense in the upper middle of both loaves, underproofing again? Not sure.
All in all a good run. The flavor was awesome. Nice depth, not too sour, my girlfriend and I both loved it. I had kind of a deep moment this morning thinking about cultivating life to cultivate life to cultivate life. Just thinking about all the things that went into the bread was pretty intense. It gives a little perspective on life I feel. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this far, I look forward to hearing from everyone!
Thanks in advance,
Chase