4 loaves this past long weekend. New recipe sourdough, with a cold proof. This recipe has (knock on wood) solved my proofing issues and now I get these beautiful loaves once again!
btw Quatrarius welcome back
330 grams water, lukewarm (1.4 cups) 450 grams unbleached all-purpose flour (3.735 cups) 50 grams whole wheat flour (whatever that is in cups--it's like 2 heaping tablespoons?) (idk, i use weight when baking) 6 grams salt (1 teaspoon) - Weigh your flour; or measure it by gently spooning it into a cup, then sweeping off any excess. - Combine all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, mixing so that it's even. Combine water and sourdough starter. Gently stir so the starter and the water become one. Add water-starter mixture to the dry ingredients. - Mix and stir everything together (by hand or stand mixer, whatever you got) to make a sticky, rough dough (just until well-combined and no clumps of flour remain). - Leave the dough in the bowl, cover it with a piece of plastic wrap or damp kitchen towel, and let it rise for 1 hour. - Gently pick up the dough and fold it over on itself several times, cover it again, and let it rise for another hour. - Repeat once more--fold again and rise for an hour. At the end of the hour, fold and then place in the refrigerator. Let dough rest for at least 8 hours (up to 48). - When you're ready to make bread, turn the dough out onto a well-floured work surface, and shape it into a rough ball. Leave the dough seam-side up, cover it, and let it rest on a floured surface for 15 minutes. - Shape the boule and place into a parchment-paper lined Dutch oven. Let the boule come up to room temperature and rise (approx. 3 hours). - Towards the end of the rise, depending on how fast your oven heats up, preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. - Dust with flour, and use a sharp knife to make one 1/2" deep slash through the top surface. Cover with the Dutch oven lid and insert into oven. - Immediately (!) reduce oven temperature to 450 degrees F, bake for 45 minutes. - Remove the lid and bake for 10-15 minutes more, depending on your oven, until the bread is deeply golden brown (the very edge where you sliced the top may be a bit burned but that's ok! a crunchy crust is more important). - Remove the bread from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool completely. Basically a mix between this King Arthur recipe and my old recipe. This recipe's text is adapted from KA. PS: If your oven has a "convection bake" setting, I recommend it. Keeps the heat even. 189 grams ripe (fed) sourdough starter
Very similar to my recipe, main difference is I've been getting away with using only 50 g of starter and letting it proof overnight after the folds. In the morning I shape it, dump it in a proofing basket and put it in the fridge and then bake it in the evening. I've been able to push the amount of whole-wheat flour to 50% by doing some more folds and increasing the amount of water. My current recipe is 50 g starter, 9 g salt, 350 g water, 300 g white flour and 200 g whole-wheat spelt flour.
old recipe no-knead sourdough bread recipe Ingredients 4 grams kosher salt 180 grams sourdough starter (fed, i.e. doubling every 12 hours or faster) 300 grams lukewarm tap water Initial dough formation and rise In smaller bowl, combine lukewarm water with sourdough starter. Mix until combined and mixture is liquid-y. Add water and starter to the large mixing bowl. Mix until combined with a spatula. This is not a kneading step, but do make sure there are not large pockets of dry flour in the dough. Cover bowl in plastic wrap, place a tea towel on top. Leave to rise overnight, 10-12 hours. I get best results around there, but it will depend on your ambient house temperature and how active your starter is. Boule forming and second rise A boule is the rounded shape of a common handmade loaf. What we’re trying to do is to form a taut surface on the top of the boule, so that it rises upwards instead of spreading outwards, and form the rounded shape that will create the final shape of the loaf. Dust a work surface (a clean countertop or a clean wooden cutting board) with flour, dump out the dough and form a boule (this might be a useful demonstration up until about 1:15). Transfer boule to parchment paper. Let rise, covered with a flour-dusted tea towel for 2 hours or until roughly doubled in size. Don’t worry if it doesn’t double, it should spring in the oven. Baking Transfer the boule into the dutch oven using the parchment paper, being careful not to burn yourself on the oven sides (they’re very hot!). Cover and bake for 25-30 minutes. Uncover and continue to bake an additional 20-30 minutes until nicely browned. Set to cool on a wire rack. Don’t cut into the bread until it’s cooled (at least a half hour)! 425 grams all-purpose flour, or bread flour Combine flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Dust parchment paper with flour. Preheat the oven to 450° F (if you have an anemic oven, you can set it higher), and preheat your dutch oven. Before transferring the boule, score the top with a (very) sharp knife or razor blade. I typically run one large cut down the middle of the boule, aiming for about a half-inch deep score.
I had a cooking realization while watching the GBBS the other day... Metric countries have way easier recipes. I literally have a magnet on my fridge that translates between different measurements. I have liquid and solid measuring devices, as well as a scale. I have a set of measuring spoons. I have a set of measuring cups. I have no idea ahead of time if the bowl I am mixing my dry and wet ingredients into will be... too small... too big... or just right. In metric countries, not one of these things is an issue... you have a bowl, and you have a scale. That's it. My head exploded when I realized this earlier this week... and I have yet to find all the pieces of my skull. (BTW - That bread looks heavenly...)
Don't know about the rest of Europe, but most of our recipes even for baking comes in volume measurements. My kitchen has a liter measure and a deciliter measure, as well as non-SI, Swedish cookbook standard tablespoon (15 ml), teaspoon (5 ml) and spice measure (1 ml).
For broad definitions of "metric." I've got a goodly collection of British recipes that call out temperatures as "gas mark 4" and if you've never read a cake recipe designed for the Aga do-si-do you're missing out. Speaking as someone who has now dealt with European cars, European jewelry and European watchmaking, European adoption of the metric system is far more ambivalent than most Americans realize. Jewelry is still built in gauges which are bizarrely tied to American, English or French inches, and the entire Swiss watch industry adopted the ligne despite the fact that the Metric System was 100 years old before any of them got started. I do my casting with investment recipes that are called out in pounds and cups for flasks that are measured in inches which go into a kiln whose burnout schedules are in fahrenheit to pour molten metal melted in celsius. The only thing that makes it work is a 4-tab Excel spreadsheet with lookup tables that prints out a worksheet. The Metric System is obviously superior on every possible level yet for some reason Europe, which has had two hundred fucking years of supposed adoption, still throws a fuckin' pouce in there every now and then just to be French about it.
I make two loaves a week and have done since March. I've gone through most of a 25lb bag of flour. And I think I killed 10lbs before I bought that loaf. I measure the water, I measure the sugar, I measure the yeast, I measure the salt, I measure the flour and I add whatever the fuck I feel like. PROTIP: garlic salt and dried onion inhibits yeast growth. The local grocery store... stopped carrying yeast in March. They still don't have it. They no longer have a place for it. It's one of the many reasons I no longer shop there. It takes me three hours to buy groceries now because I have to hit three or four fucking places.
TIL. Though I'm kind of surprised this happened if you replaced your ordinary salt with garlic salt. :( I remember March. The days where I had to be in the door at Trader Joes within the first 30 minutes of opening to get a single bag of flour. They were out for a couple of weeks--yeast too. What are the other reasons?PROTIP: garlic salt and dried onion inhibits yeast growth.
The local grocery store... stopped carrying yeast in March.
It's one of the many reasons I no longer shop there.
Yeah fer real, dude, you read that garlic is antibacterial but you don't really grok it until you discover that garlic salt gives you half the rise of... salt. It being the only variable in a well-controlled process, I gotta lean into the garlic salt. 1tsp of garlic salt will totally inhibit 1TBSP of yeast. Proofing it 10 minutes before you adding everything else doesn't matter, the garlic salt flattens it. Fred Meyer used to be an Oregon concern that mixed groceries with home improvement and electronics and jewelry and stuff. It was the kind of place you could buy a sandwich and a Front Line Assembly CD. When my long-term girlfriend dumped me in 2001 I went to Fred Meyer and bought a 27" TV, a claw hammer, a box of condoms and a party sub. It was pretty rad. It's Kroger now, and every single employee has Kroger eyes. They also got rid of... everything and replaced it with... nothing. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I went in there right on the verge of the mask requirements and there was a manager insisting that a Somali dude buy a mask to continue shopping who didn't do a thing about the white couple right next to him. When I called to say "thanks for doing the mask stuff but maybe do it more evenly" they tried real hard to pry the name of the manager out of me because apparently they weren't supposed to do mask stuff at all for another two days and they wanted to punish her. It's just Walmart now, except the money goes to fucking Ohio instead of fucking Arkansas.