Hi all, I thought I would post up a few pictures of my latest sourdough loaves. This is the third time I've baked using my own 100% sourdough starter, (Evan).
The first time I used my starter resulted in a very sour loaf with a super chewy crust. Evan was only 6 days old at the time, and although he passed the float test, he smelled very acidic.
Since then he has matured nicely, and the smell when ripe is rich and yeasty.
After 2 weeks of 12 hourly feedings, I have now settled into a more relaxed regime where I keep the starter in the fridge during the week and feed it once during the weekend. I only keep 200g on hand and take just a little out to build any preferments that I want.
In preparation for baking on the weekend, on Thurs evening I take a small spoonful of starter and spike a 500g 100% poolish using white flour and water, I leave this out and feed in another 250g/250g on Friday night with no discarding, which gives me enough to bake 2 loaves.
By Saturday morning the preferment is jumping out of its tub and ready to go. I am currently doing mix, BF, shape, prove and bake in a single day.
These were my second attempt at Chef Jacobs Sourdough boules.
The oven spring was not all that I hoped for, but I think that was due to my forming not being very good.
The crust was much less chewy than the first bake, and the crumb was good.
The stripes and spots are from my colander "proving baskets".
So we come to last weekend, and the third bake.
I am so much happier with these loaves and I think this is the best bread I have ever baked.
The dough held up really well after a couple of rounds of tension pulls, and the oven spring was satisfying. I think if I keep my scoring cuts a little higher on the loaf, it may improve the height a little.
These were baked in my terracotta flower pot oven, (an idea I got from somebody either on here, or on The Fresh Loaf, Thankyou), with a few ice cubes thrown in for steam.
I prefer to keep the crumb not too airy as this is our daily bread and has to serve as both sandwich and toast.
This bread made a great steak sandwich the next day.
Next bake, I'm going to retard the proving in the fridge overnight, and bake on Sunday morning. I want to see if I can get more of a sheen on the crumb and improve the flavour a little.
Thankyou so much for the information you have provided and shared on this site Jacob, it is just too good.
Happy baking.