Just like million others who jumped on the bread-making bandwagon during the pandemic, we used our time WFH to learn a new skill, and found so much pleasure in doing so.
We would like to thank Cat & Sam's mom for the success of our new hobby: not only did she give us a strong and active sourdough starter to get us going, but she also sent us step-by-step instructions, with video illustrations.
We named our starter Buu-Blé, and we feed Buu-Blé once a week.
We save the best flour we have for Buu-Blé during this shortage of flour and baking products: King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour.
It is so pleasurable to watch Buu-Blé grow and double its size at the end of its feeding.
In return, Buu-Blé gave us a great levain for our weekly sourdough bread.
It is so fulfilling to learn and understand the chemistry of rising dough, to practice the various stretch and pull and shaping techniques to handle the dough, to experiment with the scoring of the dough, and at the end, to be in awe of the beautiful loaf that comes out of the oven.
Our sourdough bread #3 looked and tasted pretty good.
Our Baker's % for loaf #3 was:
55% Hydration
30% starter -- 100% hydration active starter, refreshed (fed)
1.2% salt
We used White Lilly bleached all-purpose flour.
We have added 5% hydration from attempt #2, and we are now 5% away from the hydration required in Aunt Joy's recipe (60% hydration.)
At 55% hydration, we were able to handle the dough well, and it had no problem rising.
We reduced the baking time without the lid to 15 minutes (from 20 minutes.)
We felt the baking time still needed to be adjusted further, as the bottom of the loaf was still a bit hard.
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| Sourdough loaf #3 |
This below was our second attempt, a significant improvement over our first attempt.
We reduced the hydration by 10% to prevent our mishandling of the dough.
The scoring left to be desired, and we believe the baking time needed to be adjusted, as the crust was overdone.
We still happily ate the whole loaf.
Our Baker's % for loaf #2 was:
50% Hydration
30% starter -- 100% hydration active starter, refreshed (fed)
1.2% salt
This was baked with a preheated Dutch oven, at 40 minutes with lid on (500 deg F), and 20 minutes with lid off (450 deg F.)
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| Sourdough loaf #2 |
This below was our very first attempt at making sourdough bread.
It was inedible, as it did not rise properly, and in our attempt to salvage the bread, we baked too long, turning the poor loaf into a piece of rock.
Our Baker's % for loaf #1 was:
60% Hydration
30% starter -- 100% hydration active starter, refreshed (fed)
1.2% salt
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| Sourdough loaf #1 |
What did we do wrong? It was hard to tell; we made so many rookie mistakes!
But here were a few mistakes that we identified in order to fix:
- We left the dough to rest in the oven (OFF) with the light ON (one of the internet tips) -- perhaps this was too warm; the dough was a shaggy mass every time we handled it
- We did not know how to handle the dough properly during the mixing stage and folding stage, so we played with the dough too much (we ended up folding the dough 8 times); the dough never built the proper gluten structure.
- We did not preheat the oven long enough, did not own an oven temperature, and baked at (what we assumed) 475 deg F with lid on for 40 minutes, and 425 deg F with lid off for an extended 30 minutes or maybe longer (?)
- It was a rainy day, perhaps causing the dough to be wetter than we could handle.
Lessons learned:
- We have been leaving the dough to rest on the kitchen counter, and have been getting good results
- We reviewed different youtube videos to learn the proper stretch and fold techniques, and shape and tension pull techniques from expert bread makers
- We purchased not one, but two oven thermometers! And we kept an eye on the temperature readings during pre-heat and baking stages
- True or not, we kept an eye out for the weather forecast and only planned to make bread on beautiful sunny days! This may change as we build confidence in recognizing what the dough should feel like at each stage
We used the leftover discard to make a sourdough scallions pancake. Delicious snack!
If you want to learn how to make sourdough bread, you will need a few kitchen tools.
And the willingness to try, fail, and try again!
We found the bread making process to be very fun and fulfilling, especially during the pandemic where there was no place to go and no one to meet.
Minimum kitchen gadgets required:
1. A dutch oven
2. Two 24-oz (or larger) jars for the starter
3. A food scale for accurate measurement of flour and water
4. An oven thermometer to check oven temperature during baking (lesson learned for us!)
5. A large mixing bowl
6. A kitchen towel
Additional kitchen gadgets for the perfectionists out there:
7. A banneton basket for circular design on the bread
8. A razor lame for fancy scoring
9. A metal bench scraper
10. A plastic dough scraper
11. Rice flour (gluten-free) to line the proofing basket
