Cooking Cheap

Todays effort at bread is from Peter Reinhart’s, “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. On loan from the library. There’s nothing particularly magical about his sourdough recipe and he clearly says, “this is one way to do it”. In fact, I am going to do it a little differently because I’m testing my new (to me) KA flour more than his recipe or techniques.

Step one. I removed the jar of starter from the fridge and let it stand on the counter for an hour to warm up. I put 1 oz of flour and 1 oz of water and 5/8oz (half a table spoon?) of starter in a wee little bowl and mixed it up well with a spoon. That’s half the amount of starter I need for half of his recipe — I’m only going to make 1 1.5lb loaf, not two. I also want the starter to adjust to eating the new flour I’m using. I can’t predict how long it will take (it’’s been two hours at this point at room temp and it smells like a starter). It might get frothy in a couple of hours, it might take all night. It took 7 hours.

Step two: Add 1 oz of water and 1 oz of flour and the starter from step one, That will get me his “barm” and I’ll follow the recipe from there (except I’m cutting it in half). This goo/chef/levain/barm shouldn’t take as long to eat it’s own weight since it’s so active. It should be at 100% hydration give or take some minor amount. It feels a bit more elastic, more doughy when I mixed it than previous ‘chefs’. That could be the stronger flour, or wishful thinking. I’ll leave on the counter overnight (about 12 hours)

Step Three: Mix 6.5 oz of water, 10.25 oz of flour, the starter from step two (4.5oz) and 1 tsp of salt. Knead. I added a bit more water because it seemed dry. Then it was a little two wet but I hand kneaded it anyway for 5 minutes. Then it put in the bowl to rise (or proof or ferment) on the counter.

Step Four: I got to thinking maybe I didn’t knead it enough. I rarely do. So every 45 minutes I did the stretch and fold. I did that three times and then left it alone. 4.5 hours into this phase, it’s starting to look like a decent rise will happen. I’m not sure when.

Come to think of it, It’s not a lot of starter relative to the final size so it should take a longer. After 7 hours, I moved to the next step anyway. I may have rushed it

Step Five: Shaping into a boule and retard. It was still soft and a bit sticky. Too soft to really shape it well. I heavily floured the banneton and cloth. I made an extra effort to pinch the seams. Wrapped all that in a plastic bag and put it into the fridge. Tomorrow it might be a boule or a ciabatta or a mess in the banneton.

Step Six:I took the banneton out of the fridge and let it proof for 5.5 hours which seems like forever. Nice oven spring. From the outside, it looks pretty good. I still didn’t get anything gluten strand impressive around the slashes though. It’s good to know that it can be retarded in the banneton.

This just in. I’ve got tunnels! Nice ones although not as evenly distributed as I might want.

I’m sure it can’t be perfection. That can’t happen. It’s very close though. and I am afraid I’m getting too close to “way good”.