Monday, March 2, 2009

Sourdough Bread, Country-Style French

This is a page out of my notebook that gives a description of the sourdough bread that I've been concentrating on perfecting. See the preceding post for a description on how the seed culture was started.


The recipe is based on the "Country-Style French" out of the "The Village Baker" by Joe Ortiz. I have been doing all my proofing in the oven with just the light turned on. This has been working great to keep the oven at a stable 70 F.

This iteration of the bread turned out the best looking but was too stiff to knead well (at least that's my explanation) so its crumb was a little cakey and crumbly not chewy. If you follow the directions without the addition of the final 100g of flour and then add some more as needed (maybe another 25-50g) the hydration should be good and kneading easier. Some loaves I have made too wet which ends up with good crumb but they tend to just expand out and make kinda flat spread out loaves.

Sourdough Starter - Leaven

Steven (my neighbor and framily member) and I have been working on sourdough breads now for a month or so. This posting includes a page from my "Pizza and Breads" notebook that details the steps we took to make an active sourdough starter or leaven. We have now used this leaven numerous times and I have given it out to others.