It's been two and a half months since my original post. During this time I've kept mucking (enhancing) with the recipe (my Chemistry/Software/Engineering background - don't know when it's good enough to stop) The core instructions are still from SeriousEats' Kenji; the interpretations are updated. Here's the final product (look! it has horns!)
 |
| With updated instructions |
 |
| Original instructions |
During this
quarantine time, I found this to be a soul satisfying undertaking. Fun with chemistry!😉
You will need: bread flour (preferable), salt, water. For the starter, you can use a mixture of different flours. I found that
raw rye flour gives the best rise, it also darkens the bread a little. I’ve
been staying with unbleached bread flour to continue feeding the starter.
Starter
is ready after close to 7 days, when it has lots of bubbles at the top and on the side.
Comments: Make
sure the starter in the container is not concave, (center is lower than side) -
that means the microbes in the starter has depleted their food. Feed it some
more before using it.
Use a scale,
weigh out:
4 oz starter (consistency like
cake batter)
2 oz bread flour
1 oz water
Mix well,
cover and let sit at room temperature overnight, cover, and refrigerate for 6 hours to overnight to autolyse.
When ready, it does not need to be doubled. It is now half the volume as shown in photo below.
Check in the
morning, ideally it should have doubled at least, and not concave.
 |
After autolyse (in 28 oz bowl) |
Mix
together:
435 grams bread flour,
6 grams salt
Stir so the salt
isn’t sitting at one spot,
180 grams
starter (should be all that was autolysed in previous step)
300 grams water
Stir well.
Dough will be wet. Let it rest for about 10 minutes.
 |
| Dough mixed, and before stretch and fold |
Stretch and fold about 12 times, or until the dough is smoother (doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth and silky). Move the dough into a bigger bowl for it to rise.
 |
| After stretch and fold (in 95 oz bowl) |
Cover loosely and stick it in the fridge for 3 days per Kenji. and let
it rise overnight.
In the
morning, it should have risen quite a bit; stick the whole thing with the cover
on into the fridge.
After 2 days
(Kenji Lopez said 3 days, but I find that the dough starts to concave – I think
over-proofed with the sugar being exhausted) take it out of the fridge.
After refrigeration, it is now half the volume of the original photo below.
 |
After refrigeration (slightly smoother) |
Let it rest 5-10 minutes or immediately if you can handle the cold dough.
Jelly Rolling shows how to generate good surface tension to avoid pancake bread. I believe the cold dough prevents it from getting sticky. If you repeat the jelly-rolling, it gets stickier, either because the dough has warmed up, but more probably because the gluten structure of the dough is affected adversely. By about the third time, it gets way too sticky (ask me how I know that!) By doing the jelly roll just once,it leads to large holes in the bread. See Wild Crumb vs Even Crumb by Joy Ride Coffee on Youtube.
Plop the dough
onto floured parchment paper (I use unbleached parchment paper). Flatten and fold it like an envelope, turn and repeat a few times. Turn dough over.
Pull the dough away on both sides and tuck under, stretching the surface to create surface tension – this prevents it from spreading flat on rising and allows it to be scored easily. Rotate and do this several times until the dough becomes smooth and round. I just found an alternative method which is similar to the stretch and fold method. See Surface Tension link below, which says that you need to do it quite a few times, which I'll try the next time.
Load the dough into the boule. Cover loosely and stick it into the fridge overnight. The loose covering dries out the dough a bit and also allows for cleaner slashing before baking.
I lift the
parchment paper with the dough ball and gently put it into a boule, or a bowl
with similar shape, and let it rise. In a pinch you can let it rise on a cookie
sheet, making sure that you have done enough stretching so it doesn’t flatten
into a pancake when it rises.
 |
Before final rise |
When double in
size, (5-6 hours), When ready to bake, put a cast iron pot with top or Dutch oven in the oven
and set the oven temperature to 450 to 475 degrees F. Allow it to heat for 20-30
minutes after oven temperature is reached. (Note: I forgot to load the pot into the oven while preheating, and remedied that by heating the pot and lid(if possible) on the stove top to get it up to temperature)
Remove the dough from the refrigerator. It will have risen about 30%, i.e. not doubled in volume. It is easier to score because it has dried up a bit in the fridge. Score at an angle of 30 degrees and about 1/2 inch deep to generate "horns" after baking. Score the
dough assertively. Because it looked dry when scoring I spritzed it with water (about 12 inches above and across the scored dough, not directly onto the dough itself), don't know if it is necessary, but it didn't hurt the final product. – I had problems with this for the longest time, because I did
not do the surface tension stretch and would deflate the dough when I scored it,
even with a lame. Now I
just use a thin knife, t
Lift the
parchment paper carefully to remove the dough from the boule, and put it into the (screaming hot!) cast iron pot cover. If you're using a Dutch oven, put it into the pot itself. Handle it gently (and don't burn yourself) so as not to deflate the loaf. Cover and
bake for 30 minutes, uncover and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the top is very dark.
When 25-30
minutes are up, turn off oven, prop the oven door open about an inch for 20
minutes. This is to caramelize the top, something I saw on Youtube. Let the bread cool before cutting.
 |
| Look at them holes! |
 |
Original
|
Allow it to
cool if you can restrain yourself. Crust should be crackly. The perfect loaf
should have larger holes in the center, smaller around the sides, and “horns”
where the top has been scored. I haven’t achieved the holes and the horns yet –
still trying GOT IT!! See perfect
loaf as described in SeriousEats.
Comment: If you want to keep the starter going,
add 100 grams flour and 100 grams water, stir and let it sit at room
temperature to start over again. Otherwise cover and put it in the fridge, it will keep until
you take it out, and feed it for the next loaf.
After a while
your starter jar will be overflowing if you didn’t discard part of the starter. Pour out all but ½
cup of the starter and start building it up again (100 grams flour, 100 grams water). For the discard, I pour it into
an oiled pan, and fry it up to make a savory pancake, adding green onions,
salt, pepper and whatever herbs available at hand.
Comment: I have been doing a lot of research re:sourdough and its chemistry. Interesting references below.
1. Sourdough Postmortem:
2. Talk about
mistakes to avoid:
3. Kenji Lopez’s
regular (not sourdough) bread recipe that I got ideas from:
4. Discussion on Surface
Tension:
5. Netflix
The Chef Show,
Episode 2 (I think) where Jon Favreau baked a sourdough bread
