78% hydration - 15 hr proofing including overnight fridge retardation. 60% strong white Canadian, 25% Semolina Riconcetta and 15% Enker

DavecUK stickied the discussion .

That looks nice, just love a sourdough. I am just in the process of making my starter I am trying a light rye and strong bread flour. Hopefully I will be ready in about a week to start making some bread. New starter and a nice new Ankarasum mixer.

I only tried sourdough recently as it was served for breakfast as avo toast at a B&B I stayed at in, er, Rye (how appropriate!)

I’ll be honest, I am not about to embark on learning how to bake it quite yet, but it’s my favourite bread now so I’ll be watching and learning.

9 days later

Lovely bread! I started sourdough baking during the summer (got a starter from my mother in law). Additional benefit of owning an espresso machine is that the cup warmer rack is an excellent place to activate the starter during the winter😊

    Cino I have just started again, attempting to bake bread. I suppose I just play at it but am hoping to start and maintain making my own as it is far superior than standard shop bread. Great Idea with the cup warmer. I have a small Brod and Taylor proofer which folds down to conserve space. I am just baking my first loaf as I type so fingers crossed.

      made a lot of sourdough over lockdown, probably a loaf every other day, because well, why not. Loved the workflow and got some pretty decent bread at the end of it (as well as a few utter disasters) 
      Different thread maybe but if you’ve got a sourdough starter and you haven’t made pizza with it yet you really must!

        I don’t think mine is going to come out the same. Something has gone wrong and the loaf has not risen even though my starter was good. Back to the drawing board.

          Meldrew how long have you left your first prove? It takes much longer when the weather is cold. That pic above is one of the better ones I’ve done. Sometimes even though you’ve done exactly the same method, flour etc it’s just doesn’t come out - still tastes good though 😉

            Baldrick I made my first sourdough pizza (Roman style) couple of weeks ago and it tasted amazing.

              I did a overnight prove in the fridge which went on for 16 hrs due to a holdup getting home in time then 4 hours in the proofer. The bread started to rise then stopped rising so it went straight into the oven.

                Meldrew see how it bakes! Might be ok. I did mine slightly differently to you - I would make the dough and allow it to prove for 4-6 hours. Then knock it back, create surface tension on the dough and put in the fridge overnight. Pre heat my oven and cooking vessel (Dutch oven in my case) and put the bread straight into oven from the fridge.

                    Sorry I forgot to say that I did knock back twice and each time it rose. Just not sure at the moment what has gone wrong.I think that I should have proofed in my proofer but that would have meant me baking till the early hours which I was not in the position to do. I will just keep on trying

                    Here is my usual workflow I learnt from a sourdough baking book. Sorry if some terms sound weird, English is not my native language.

                    1. Mix flour, water and the starter.

                    2. Let sit for 1 hour (autolyse).

                    3. Poke pits on the dough, sprinkle salt in the pits (and oil if recipe calls for it).

                    4. Let rise for 3 hours. During that time, stretch and fold at least 3 times, but wait around 30 mins between. The salt (and oil) is going to incorporate to the dough.

                    5. Shape to a ball by folding dough to middle and create surface tension by twisting the ball.

                    6. Let rest for 30 mins on the countertop.

                    7. Drop to a rising basket and refrigerate the dough overnight.

                    8. In the morning, heat the oven and a dutch oven inside it.

                    9. Take the dough from the fridge, slash the surface and immediately drop in the hot dutch oven.

                    I need to train more how to tell when the dough has risen enough and not just rely on the clock :)

                      Cino Baldrick thanks for all your help with this.

                      I removed the two other pieces of dough from the fridge this morning.

                      Knocked back and left to rise

                      Oven heated to 250c with baking stone inside

                      Bread slashed and put into a casserole pot and into oven for 40 minutes

                      Here are the results.

                      Left and centre were done today as stated above one on right was done yesterday

                      Which was a bit more dense

                      Good crust and flavour.

                      Texture good but not enough rise as you can see

                      I believe that the dough should have been worked more which I will try next time.

                            Meldrew they look great! I would not be unhappy with those at all! Here’s the recipe/method I used for what it’s worth - there’s a text version of the video in the description.

                            Brown flours take a lot longer to develop the gluten. A friend of mine makes some superb rye and brown flour ones but then he has a stand mixer 😉 you can do it by hand but it takes a bit longer than straight up strong white.

                            As with coffee, when you’re getting your method down don’t change more than one parameter at a time.

                            Looking forward to your next bake 👍🏻

                            Oh - a banneton was an absolute game changer. Really helps to support the bread as it rises (and it makes in look pretty)

                                Baldrick

                                Once again many thanks. He does make it look easy. As you say only change one thing at a time. Here’s to my next bake.

                                  I am looking to grab some old sourdough starter from a reputed store. Would appreciate any recommendations please. Thx

                                    LMSC You never know Systemic (Patrick) may let you have some of his for postage…assuming it can be posted. Whatever he is using is supercharged!

                                    Contact me

                                        LMSC BakeryBits sell sourdough starter.I just purchased my mixer from them and they were really helpful, have bought a few things from them and never have had any issues.