Cooking Cheap

This may be an “interesting” experiment. Same recipe as the last one. Scant Tbl of starter, 1.5 oz of water, 3 z of KA BF. Mix and knead, it’s very dry. Let sit on the counter top of a lot of hours. This one was around 18 hours. Mix that up with 8 oz of water, 11 oz of the KA BF, let set, knead a bit, add salt (1 Tsp), knead a bit, Let set a bit, knead. “A bit” is 3 to 8 minutes. It’s a mildly wet , 65% dough so you use water on your hands to help knead.

That’s what I did previously, although not all “bits” of time are equal. With all the water on my hands, its probably closer to 70% hydration but it seems like the same dough as the previous attempt. Indoor temp is a bit lower than then. This time I put the dough in a 4C (plus) Pyrex measuring. It’s roughly 2C of dough. That’s no surprise, it was roughly 2 C of flour and 1 cup of water.

This time I want to test whether I’m over proofing on the bulk fermentation (first rise). There’s three different tests that yeast bakers may use all in the same recipe. They go by time and temp. 1.5 hours at 80F, Until doubled (a visually tricky measurement in a bowl with slopping sides) Or until you can poke it a quarter inch and the indentation remains. “The touch”

Sourdough has it own time schedule so you can’t go by the clock. This test is about my hypothesis that stronger flours need less time in the bulk rise than “normal” bread flour, and higher hydration makes the strong flour dough more amenable to quicker “dough rot” or break down the gluten (the dough becomes wetter and will stick to you when you poke it). That’s the test.

I let the dough rise for 2 hours and 15 minutes. It passed the indentation test. I did not wait for a double or triple. It went from 2 Cup to 3C. Last I did the math, that’s a half, not even close to a double. I covered the bowl in plastic wrap and put it into the fridge until the next day.

The next day, I took it out of the fridge and shaped in to a round (boule) and let it rise on some parchment paper (over an inverted baking sheet). Easy to shape and seam, I got a nice smooth skin. It took about 3.5 hours to rise to the proper “touch”. It was cool inside the house, below 70. I did the full steam treatment because it looked like it would be a good loaf and worth that small effort.

Plenty of oven spring, almost a sphere in fact. Looks good from the outside although it’s a bit smaller than previous loaves. It feels as a little more dense when hefted. That’s probably from the shorter bulk rise and the cold shaping. The slashes filled in of course, I may give up on that sub goal. The bottom of the loaf (where the seam was) is promising. It started to blow out on the underside in a couple of places, probably at the seams. I can definitely see gluten strands. A very pretty loaf of bread. I probably won’t take a picture, there’s plenty of those.

Somethings I won’t know until I slice it. What I do know is that a 5 to 6 hour, triple in size bulk ferment works against me, at least with the KA BF. I know you can free form a loaf without a banneton or form if you do a proper shaping and the dough hasn’t started to break down. (I knew that before but it’s always nice when it works). If I remember correctly, using 10% to 50% of whole wheat to AP has the same effect – Easy to over proof and it changes how the dough feels at similar hydration levels compared to most bread flours (or KA AP). I’d say I’ve learned a lot. Good thing too because I still got 4.75lb of the KA BF to use.

[Much Later]
It was decent bread but it wasn’t developed quite enough. Bit more time on the first rise I think.