Great article and thoughts, I guess I can sum it up with “be the starter” or “think like starter”.
More seriously, its interesting to see your “half teaspoon” in contrast to the Ken Forkish “make 1,000 grams of refreshed starter the night before your bake and throw all but 200 grams away.” I do find the “refresh” works, or at least speeds things up I guess, although the quantities Forkish calls for are way over the top.
On parchment though, I will part company; even gloves wont help my clumsy efforts to get the dough into a scorching pot evenly and neatly. I find the parchment is foolproof, it makes it so easy to unmold, and I dont see any difference in quality (except perfectly shaped loaves).
Dang, so the starter i build 12 years ago from the local organic apples is no different from the two other cultures i nourish weekly? Psssssssssssspt goes my bubble!
I started my weekly baking about 10 years ago when i received “52 loaves” as a Christmas gift. I have used it as my guide. My practice is to bulk ferment at least overnight (and sometimes overnight x2) before shaping. I guess i will try retarding again after shaping and see if it exhausts the supply of sugars before i bake. Gotta say, though, bread baking “instructions” that have the dough sit out to rise “an hour or so” has never worked for me. My kitchen is too cool, and perhaps my starter too weak. My results are MUCH improved when my dough sits out 4 or more hours pre-bake.
In my experience, I see these kind of differences when the ratio of starter to flour is on the higher side. The greater that ratio, the more difference the quality of the starter makes in the resulting loaf. If you built two doughs side-by-side with the only difference being what starter you used in each, and in each you used a very small amount of starter, my guess is (my experience is) that you won’t be able to tell the difference between them in the end. And my belief is that this is because the microbial environment in each loaf will be dominated by the near-identical conditions given by the flour in the recipe.
Parchment works great and I still use it sometimes (like for transferring baguettes to a hot baking stone). I’m just an efficiency freak and I didn’t like the waste of paper and the addition of yet another component and (to me) fiddly process in my regular country loaf production. For me, I like the directness of just turning the basket over into the baking vessel. But I also like what @MTJohn wrote earlier in this thread:
It totally depends on what method I am using to make a given loaf, and also on what else I happen to be doing when the dough is fermenting (sometimes too busy with other stuff to get to the kitchen and stick my hands in the mixing bowl). But yeah, usually I do some stretching and folding, and lately I have been experimenting with shortening the bulk fermentation a little early and then doing a pretty thorough flattening and lamination of the dough before shaping it and then doing a bit longer second proof in a basket.
Such manipulations, done well and at the right time, definitely help make the dough’s consistency more elastic and extensible and that definitely can contribute to a better rise and a more open crumb texture because the more elastic and extensible the dough, the better it will do as a balloon-like container of C02.
I’m not trying to recommend that people forego such techniques (though I think initially just using a basic no-knead method and keeping things as uncomplicated as possible is the best way to develop an intuitive understanding of sourdough baking). I’m trying to recommend that people understand why they are doing what they are doing, rather than just following some set of rote instructions that they read somewhere.
I will research one and try it. A boning knife just brings to mind a horror of a murder mystery I saw once Have to admit thst I’ve had little success with a lame! Thanks again for the supportive suggestion.
I typically like to use a good quantity of starter (250 grams) because I prefer the tangy flavor over the grain flavor. However, several have noted after tasting my bread that both the tang and the grain (dark rye) come through because my starter is 1/2 Dark Rye and the other half is white flour. For the recipe, I use only white flour. I get a good healthy rise in the result with exceptional flavor.
That was interesting! I used only 8g of starter directly from the refrigerator. I usually use about 85g of a 100% hydrated levain (refrigerated starter, a mix of the flours that I will use in the loaf, and water) prepared the night before I start the bulk ferment. The dough developed, but so slowly that after 13 hours at 72°F, the dough had some structure and surface bubbles, but had not increased in volume at all.
I left the dough to finish fermentation on a cool counter (66°F) overnight. In the morning, after another 10 hours, the dough had more than doubled and was ready for shaping and a final 90 minute proof.
The loaf baked up nicely as a batard and had a good crisp crust, good color, open crumb, and good flavor with a little acidity.
Altogether, I would say that it was a fine loaf, that did not really take more time than my usual method, but I do not think that the final result was any better than usual, either.
I usually finish the bulk ferment the same day as I start and then shape the dough and place it in a banneton for an overnight retarded proof in the refrigerator.
Thank you for this explanation. I’m trying to develop alternative procedures at the beginning of the bread making process for: sourdough (covered here), poolish / biga / preferment (??) and regular ol’ commercial yeast. Do you know if anyone has ever written such an explanation. It would be handy to just pick one and experiment … and then pick another one next time.
Kind of a tall request.
Sorry, I’m afraid I don’t really understand what you are asking about. If you asking if I am familiar with similar treatments to what I wrote, except instead of covering sourdough it (they) go into other leavening methods, then no, I’m afraid not.
But I also want to say that my post was not an attempt to present a sourdough leavening “procedure” (aka “recipe”) either. I mentioned details of one process (of many) that I use for the purpose of illustration. My whole point here is trying to free newish sourdough bread bakers from the mental confines of any specific procedure by encouraging experimentation and a basic understanding of the process of sourdough leavening.
I updated the post to include a short section on dough hydration.
Dough Hydration
After confusion over length of proofing / fermentation time, probably the next most common mystification in sourdough bread baking (or maybe any form of bread baking; I’m not really sure because I’m pretty much just a sourdough guy myself) has to do with the dough hydration; how wet it is. Technically, in bread baking, hydration is the percentage by weight (or, if you must and in my opinion, you mustn’t, by volume) of water to flour in your dough. For example, if you have 1,000 grams of flour and 900 grams of water, that is 90% hydration. 1,000g of flour and 650g of water would be 65% hydration.
Dough hydration is another area where you are likely to experience problems sometimes if you try to follow a recipe to the letter. This is because different flours have wildly different responses to water. You could measure out the same weight of two different flours and mix them with the same weight of water and have two doughs that feel completely different; one might be relatively stiff, dry, and very manageable and the other might be wet, sticky, and hard to handle.
And when I say “two different flours,” I mean any two different sources of flour, which could include even two different batches of flour of nominally the same grain, milled in the same way (though those will tend to be more similar than flour from two different grains, or floured milled in different ways). White (roller milled) flour has very, very different properties when mixed with water than 100% whole grain flour. Bolted (sifted) flour is different from either white or whole grain. In general, all other things equal, the closer the flour is to whole grain, the more water you will likely need to use to get the same dough consistency. In other words, a 70% hydration dough made with white bread flour might feel similar to an 85% or 90% hydration dough made with 100% whole grain flour.
As with proofing time, in my experience, you also have to hold any recipe instructions that specify a certain amount of water very loosely, develop a sense of the useable range of dough wetness, again, listen to the dough and expect to adjust the ratio of water and flour in a recipe (maybe fairly dramatically) in order to get the dough into that range.
Thank you for this article. One question I have is how do you know when your sourdough has risen enough? You mention listening to the bread, but I don’t understand the language of “risen” very well. With my dry yeast breads, risen enough means, for me, that it is has come to the top of the bowls I use for this purpose. My sourdough very rarely gets much larger than when I started but will sometimes be very dense after baking (perhaps over proofed) and sometimes will be just fine. I’ve tried letting it rise on the counter over night, and I’ve tried putting in the fridge during the day and then on the counter over night, and I always get these mixed results. How can I tell when it is ready if there is no obvious change in size of the mass? Thanks for your help. Jill
You probably can’t. If there is really no rise at all, then either 1. your dough is so wet that all the C02 is bubbling right out the top of it, or 2. it is rising fine without you ever seeing it and then falling back down again before you take a look at it, or 3. your starter is not really a starter (i.e. does not have a living culture of yeasts and bacteria that makes it useful for leavening bread).
Hard to know which is the case without being able to look over your shoulder. But you can rule out each of these possibilities by doing experiments. For number 1 you could try to lower the hydration (use less water) in your recipe so that the dough is stiffer. For number 2 (and in general to be able to “listen to the dough” and learn its language), you need to pay attention to the changes that the dough goes through during the fermentation process. That means looking at the dough at least every hour or so and noting its size and smell. Wet your hand and touch the dough (a stretch and fold won’t hurt) so you can feel how its texture changes. That’s how you listen to the dough. For number 3, try taking a tablespoon of your starter and putting it into a glass. Add and thoroughly mix in 1/2 cup of white bread flour and 1/4 cup of unchlorinated water. Put a rubber band around the outside of the glass to mark the top of the level of the mixture, put it on the counter and look at it every hour or so. At 70 degrees or so, it should be doubling in size sometime within 10 - 15 hours. If it never goes above the top of the rubber band, you have a problem with your starter.
Groovy article, thanks. I had come up with the ingredients for my bread being: flour, water, and salt, to which I added, as at least equally important, the three "T"s, Time, Temperature, and Technique.
Hello, everyone.
Could someone share the recipe from the sourdough baguette that is posted early in this thread? I am looking for a recipe that gives me almost a zero crumb (large wholes/bubbles) and it seems that in this one from the picture one can achieve that. Thanks a million. Caroline
Parchment works great and I still use it sometimes (like for transferring baguettes to a hot baking stone). I’m just an efficiency freak and I didn’t like the waste of paper and the addition of yet another component and (to me) fiddly process in my regular country loaf production. For me, I like the directness of just turning the basket over into the baking vessel. But I also like what 
Have to admit thst I’ve had little success with a lame! Thanks again for the supportive suggestion.
