Sourdough Monday #1

One thing I've wanted to make for some time was a proper loaf of Sourdough Bread. There are many things you can do to make a pseudo-sourdough, which has a hint of a good sour taste, but to make the real thing you have to actually make a starter. The actual process of making and establishing the starter will come in a later post once it's finally reached something resembling a completed state. That being said one part of the process of making a starter is feeding it. You take roughly a cup of the starter and mix in a half cup of water an a half cup of flour, adjusted to keep the hydration ratio around where you want it. (This is for one style of starter: there are others.) This means that very quickly your starter will get too big to manage easily, and you have to get rid of about half of it.

So rather then throw out a few cups of perfectly good flour-water-yeast mixture, I decided to use it as a rough pre-ferment for a loaf of bread. I added 1 cup of flour and half a cup of water to the 2 cups of starter  mixture, mixed it up and let it sit for roughly 16 hours.

When I got back to it the bowl was full of the pre-ferment, and was ready to be turned into regular dough. I mixed in another 3 cups of flour and a cup of water and stirred thoroughly. Another cup of flour was mixed in to stiffen up the dough a bit, but it stayed a very wet dough. I put it into a greased container to rise, then put it in a warm place for two hours.  I expected it to merely double in size, but it surprised me and instead tripled. I poured the dough onto a throughly floured counter and folded it three times, then shaped it into a round and put it onto a floured towel to rise. After 2 more hours I put it into the oven and cooked it for 30 minutes at 500 degrees, then another 20 minutes at 425 degrees.

The result? A white bread with a bit of flavor, slightly denser and wetter then a loaf I'd make with this process would normally be. The crumb wasn't as loose or open in the middle as I'd like, although around the outer third it was quite airy.

GRADING:
Crust: B
Crumb: B
Taste: C
Overall: B-