• Mar 16-17, 2015 Baking

Happy Birthday to My Sourdough Starter

Today, Fri, Jan 30, 2015, my sourdough bread starter turns five-years-old.

I took an eight-hour bread-baking class at Zingerman's bakehouse. Near the end of class, we assembled a simple mix of all-purpose flour and water in a plastic container to begin our starter, which formed over the next few days.

So my starter was "born" in Ann Arbor, but it has grown up in Toledo.

I fed my starter two days ago. I used some of that to create a quick bread dough recipe. No instant yeast used. I'm trying Lahey's method to sourdough bread.

I set up the bread dough at 2:40 p.m.

I fed my starter again earlier, and I set that up around 1:00 p.m.

For today's bread dough recipe: I used:

• 300 grams of King Arthur all-purpose flour
• 100 grams of King Arthur white whole wheat flour
• 320 grams of water
• 10 grams of fine grain sea salt
• 160 grams of my firm, sourdough starter

I let the starter soak in water for about an hour, so that the starter would be mostly dissolved.

Process:

• mixed dry ingredients in a bowl
• added the water-starter slurry
• incorporate in bowl
• dumped dough onto counter and kneaded for maybe a minute
• placed dough ball into lightly olive-oiled Pyrex bowl

It was a super sticky, sloppy dough ball. Unsure if this will work.

Fermented at room temp in the low to mid 60s for ~8.5 hours. Then I placed the dough in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, I let the dough warm for about 90 minutes. Dumped, shaped, and proofed for 2 to 2.5 hours in a linen-lined, oval-shaped basket. Then baked as normal.

Stats immediately from the oven:

• length = 8.5 inches
• width = 6.75 inches
• height = 3.5 inches

Mar 16-17, 2015 Baking

I fed the starter on Mar 14. Then I fed the starter twice, side-by-side on Mar 16. Late in the evening on Mar 16, I assembled two bread dough doughs from one of the starters. I added the leftover starter to the other whole, fresh starter, and placed it in the frig.

Bread recipe for both bread doughs:

• 400 grams all-purpose flour
• 300 grams of room temp/cool water
• 10 grams of fine grain sea salt
• 160 grams of my firm, sourdough starter

Procedure

• mixed starter with water
• mixed dry ingredients
• added starter and water to dry ingredients
• mixed and kneaded briefly the ingredients to assemble a shaggy dough ball
• autolyse for 30 minutes
• five to six minutes of kneading
• placed dough into lightly-oiled bowl and covered with plastic
• fermented for about eight hours with house temps in the low 60s
• dumped and lightly shaped dough
• bench rest for 15 minutes
• stretch-and-fold and rounded and shaped into oblong-shape
• placed dough seam-side down into basket
• proofed for around 2.5 hours

Baking Procedure

• preheated oven with stone on the fourth rack level from the top at 500 degrees for 40 minutes with the metal bowl in the stove for the last 10 minutes of preheating
• dumped dough and rolled over onto parchment paper, so that seam-side remained down
• slashed dough
• placed dough and paper onto stone, covered with bowl, and sprayed hot water on underside of bowl
• set timer for 35 minutes.
• after 20 minutes of baking, removed lid and lowered oven temp to 475 degrees.
• during the last 15 minutes of baking, rotated the bread a few times to ensure even baking.
• after 35 minutes of baking, turned off oven and let bread continue to warm.
• after 37-38 minutes, removed bread from oven and placed it onto cooling rack.

#food - #bread - #recipe - #blog_jr