MikeJ

Probably more like goldschlager... never seen it before, personally.

So you said. I wasn't arguing in favour of using an extremely sour starter, just explaining the rationale behind why I had been.

I'd like to experiment with hybrid loaves as well. Some may call it heresy, but people like that have stood in the way of progress for all of recorded history.

My concern wasn't about the bacteria being inactive. It was that even at optimal activity, their productivity might not match that of the yeast - that is, that they wouldn't have time to sour the dough before the yeast leavened it. That's why, thus far, I've tried to give the lactobacilli a head start by using an extremely sour starter - which for me is one that's been languishing in the fridge for a week. What you're saying makes sense, and I've made a loaf using a 5% inoculum, which I'll bake when I get home. I'm also going to try your method of feeding the starter to see if that helps.

I have a question: is it necessary to have a proof stage AND a shape stage if you're only making one loaf? I can see the logic if you're making multiple loaves from the same dough, but otherwise I'm not sure I understand the point. Is there a reason you'd want to let the dough rise as an amorphous blob, shape it, and then let it rise some more, rather than just shaping it from the beginning and then letting it rise fully? Today's crumb: Incidentally, I apologize for flooding this thread with my pics - I just don't know too many people in real life who are remotely interested in bread, aside from eating it.

I would also use some flash in the pics, or take them somewhere where there's either a little natural light or better artificial light.

Very different indeed - nematodes and tapeworms are actually different phyla (nematoda and platyhelminthes, respectively). There are plenty of tapeworms you can get from fish: Diphyllobothrium latum would be one nasty example.

Why not just add a little lye?

The dough was definitely much slacker this time around. Tough to work with (for me, anyways), which is why the loaf came out sort of lumpy. The flour was about half 14% protein flour, and half 12%, plus a handful of wholegrain rye.

Results were somewhat encouraging, but the oven spring wasn't great and I'd still like a more open texture. Still, it's a step in the right direction.

I tried the no-knead-only-fold method this evening and the boule is in the fridge for the night... I'll post the results tomorrow. I'm kind of hoping it won't work, because the kneading is actually one of my favourite parts.

Today's loaf: I used very strong (14%) flour, and the hydration was a little low, which resulted in a fairly uniform crumb. But at least it's soft and fluffy rather than dense. Also a good excuse to try out a new lens I bought the other day.

Jeffrey Steingarten writes glowingly of fries fried in horse fat. I'd be very interested to read about anyone's experiences with this method, although I don't suppose it's easy to procure that much horse fat if you live in North America or Britain.

Just curious - did they steam those, or bake them?

You could always do what my parents did and buy him a set of drums... of course, then you'd have to put up with hearing him bang on them for the next 15 years, whereas he'll probably grow out of the pots and pans thing well before then.

I had some level of success with the last loaf... high hydration (didn’t use scales, but it was too wet to knead), no kneading, no folding. 1/2 white flour, 1/3 rye, 1/6 whole wheat. Prefermented with 66% of the total flour for 12 hours, then mixed in the rest, poured into a circular baking tin, and let rise overnight. In the morning I had to clean it up a bit since it had overflowed, but it came out well despite making a horribly messy job of the whole thing: thin, crisp and savoury crust, delicate crumb and open-ish texture, nice balance between caraway flavour and the subtle sourness of the rye.

I've got a preferment on right now too. It's become an obsession! I almost feel like I want to perfect sourdough just so I never have to make it ever again. I'll try less kneading and more folding with this next loaf, though.

Here are a couple more pictures. This loaf was huge and satisfying, but no matter what I try I can't seem to get the sourness and open crumb that I'm after, even with high hydrations and long preferments.

I was making dinner today, and it occurred to me that one of the best sounds in the world is the hiss from a pile of sliced onions sliding into a hot frying pan foaming with butter. What are some of your favourite kitchen sounds?

Just wondering, what does sg stand for there?

I can't help it - I'm still at the stage where I want to know everything and test everything to do with sourdough. Of course that will never happen, but my problem is I haven't even baked enough to be able to isolate the effects of a variable like temperature on a given loaf - there's too much loaf-to-loaf inconsistency right now, even when I don't purposefully change anything. I've got a test batch of sourdough a l'ancienne in the works right now... 12 hour preferment using 1/4 of the total flour, quick mix with ice water and the rest of the flour/salt, and into the fridge. I'm going to take it out in 48 hours and let it come back to room temperature, then shape and let it rise for 4 hours or so. If that doesn't give it a little tang, I might just give up altogether. I also want to try a loaf where I swap half the water out for a local unpasteurized cask ale. I don't know if the little microbes living in that will taste good in bread, but they sure do the trick for the beer.

Thanks for the kind welcome. The loaf in the picture was made in Vancouver, using Robin Hood unbleached AP flour plus 1/4 cup or so of spelt flour. In London I've been using Allinson's strong white bread flour, mainly because the store nearest my house carries it. I've tried their Very Strong White bread flour as well (13.9% protein) but didn't really like the texture it gave the crumb.

For the last few weeks I've been baking at my family's house in Vancouver and it's been pretty cold even indoors, so that's probably why I needed to add the extra time. I'm in London now, and left a boule in the kitchen to rise a couple hours ago. The kitchen is kept fairly warm by an Aga and the loaf has already doubled in size, so I guess that temperature change really is making a huge difference. I ought to pick up a thermometer sometime soon so I can put some numbers on the temperatures. I do have a setup that allows me to throw the loaves in a warm upper oven before baking, so I'll give that a try next time, probably after a slow rise at a cool temperature for flavour. Thanks! The sourness actually varies a lot from loaf to loaf, seemingly independent of all variables... some loaves are perfectly tangy, some not even remotely sour. Retarding the dough overnight in the fridge sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. The camera is a Nikon D40, and the lens is a Nikor 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6.

Hi everyone - new member here, although I've been scouring the forums for useful sourdough information for about two months now. What a great resource this site is, and what an amazing group of people to be able to glean wisdom from. I started a sourdough culture a couple months ago using the flour+water+time method, I believe after reading Jeffrey Steingarten's article on his own experiences with naturally leavened bread. Aside from pizza dough I've actually never baked bread with commercial yeast before (I just turned 23, so that's not as strange as it might seem). My sourdough breads have been my first and only breads thus far, so hopefully I'll find it that much easier using commercial yeast when I eventually do. Anyways, I've been baking sourdough on a regular basis using my starter and jackal10's excellent Sourdough Bread Tutorial. My first efforts were fairly dense, bland and disappointing, but recently the starter seems to have improved in both flavour and activity despite (or maybe because of) surviving a 3-week trip from London to Vancouver and back. I've also adjusted the rising time from 4 hours to 8 or 9, which has made a big difference. Here are a couple pictures of a recent loaf: