Baked By Bear Sourdough

Sourdough Boules

Just finished baking some sourdough boules.

This week I was playing with my bulk ferment, shaping and final proving to test some limits.

Bulk ferment I pushed to 36+ hours.

I divided and shaped into balls and bench rested for an hour.

I then shaped into boules and proved at room temperature (72°F) for 2 hours.

My “finger test” (pressing the dough) right before the bake seemed to indicate they were “over proved”. They were also mor slack when I removed the loaves from the bannetons.

From their shape / oven bloom they also seem to be over-proved.

I’ll see what the crumb looks like after they’re cool….

UPDATE:

Loaves have cooled and bake be cut open the Chia-covered loaf.

The larger bubbles right below the crust seem to confirm the loaf is over-proved. The bubble structure wasn’t more uniform and dispersed.

Seems I’m able to set these hours/temps as a boundary.

Sourdough Rye Loaf

Thought I’d try a Sourdough Rye loaf.

My inspiration was watching a new bread baking #MasterClass featuring Apollonia Poilâne

I’ve never made sourdough Rye bread before. Didn’t actually know what to expect.

By my calculations the hydration of this dough is roughly 76%. I followed her recipe in the class cookbook I downloaded.

The rye dough is much more course and I expected it to absorb more than regular bread dough.

She mentors that it would only rise about 20% after the first 1.5 hours. This looked pretty close to that in my mind.

I put the loaf back into the proving drawer for another 2 hours to rise further.

I backed at 410°F (convection) in my #ChallengerBread pan for 45 minutes (lid on) and for another 5 minutes lids off.

She called in her recipe for 425°F (conventional) for an hour.

The crust was really strong. Obviously, not a huge oven bloom like regular sourdough. The crumb was tight. Taste is well…rye.

Not sure if this is what the results should be…never made Rye bread before. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever bought a loaf of Rye bread.

If anything I’m thinking it may be a bit dense. Don’t really know though for sure.

Will need to check out some Rye bread and compare.

Sourdough Croissant (Inadvertent) Experiment

Well … today is an (inadvertent) sourdough croissant experiment!

The variable I adjusted was proving time.

Basically I forgot I had them in bags proving and got buried in client calls. Two hours later I go “Oh no!”

Normally I take my croissants out of the fridge where I had left them covered in the morning, put them in proving bags for a couple of hours before baking.

Typically this is about 2.5 – 3 hours depending on my room ambient temperature.

Not this time!

I left them out over 5 hours!

They are certainly “proved”.

I baked at my normal 375°F (convection) 15 minutes.

Another small experiment was introduced because I forgot to remove the small pizza stone from my oven. Agggghhh!

First tray actually looks pretty good!

I baked the second tray and got similar results.

Eureka!!!

Evidently I haven’t been proving long enough!!

Wow! I am thankful that I had this (inadvertent) experiment today!

Sourdough Croutons

Well … what to do with a loaf from a previous bake when you’d rather eat the one that is more recently baked?

Cut it up and attempt making sourdough croutons!

The loaf i used was leftover from the bake where I mentioned something was whacked.

It was the second of the two loaves and I didn’t feel good about giving it away.

This evening I was looking at it on my counter and “make croutons” came to mind.

Cut it into cubes (6 Cups?). Added 6T olive oil, 6T melted butter, 3T minced garlic, 3T Parmigiana Cheese, and 1T sea salt. Mixed well and baked at 375°F.

Coating with Olive Oil and other ingredients

I am tossing / flipping on my tray every 10 minutes. 30 minutes was sufficient.

I have invented sourdough crack!

My wife agrees.

Her first comment was “We’re never buying croutons from the store again!”

Her next comment was harder to understand but I think she said “They’re addictive!”

I agree.

Sourdough Boules

My latest experiment was looking at my bulk ferment process.

My process for feeding my starter, making my biga, mixing etc all stayed the same.

I bumped up my temp 4°F in my fridge drawer (33°F to 37°F). I also bulk fermented for 36 hours before dividing/shaping my loaves.

This time I separated my loaves into two, 842g balls and preshaped. Bench-rested for 45 mins, shaped and put into my round bannetons. I left them on the counter until the oven heated.

Scored then Baked them per my standard 35 minutes in Dutch Ovens at 420°F (convection) lid on.

I then removed them from the Dutch Ovens and baked another 4.5 minutes on a cold pizza stone to keep the bottoms from over baking.

Overall I’m pretty pleased. Crust looks good. Oven-spring looks good. Overall shape and color looks good. We’ll see how the crump comes out once they’re cool.

Ah… the joys of tweaking your sourdough baking technique!

Sourdough Croissants

I’m working on my sourdough croissants technique. I’ve determined this is going to be a lifelong journey…

For Christmas my wife gifted me Jimmy Griffin’s The Art of Lamination

I’m experimenting with his lock-in and lamination technique.

Another change he mentioned was allowing for the heat drop and “ice cube effect” of putting your tray of croissants into the oven.

I preheated my oven to 400°F (convection) and am baking a single tray at a time at 375°F (convention). I’ll get the oven hot again before baking the second tray.

I’m pleased with the overall bake. They smell HEAVENLY (as always).

Time to get on the Peloton…

Sourdough Technique Tweaks

Well… after that last bake I thought I’d try some tweaks to my technique.

Probably should have reduced the elements I changed at once…

Change #1 – Sourdough Starter. I’ve two (which I haven’t named yet). This was my second.

Change #2 – Proofing. I did my normal 24 hour bulk fermentation prior to shaping. However, I decided to prove in my proving box instead of putting the bannetons back in the fridge overnight. It’s that “back to work thing” and client calls / baking don’t mix well.

Overall, the oven bloom was better but not as good as I’ve previously experienced. Crust dimples were less (expected) since I didn’t bake directly from the fridge. Ear was OK on one loaf and less pronounced on other.

Not a bad attempt… will continue to practice!

Sourdough Bread: Something Is Wacked!

Well… I’ve not been happy with my bread bakes for the last two iterations.

Something is out of wack!

My oven bloom has been anemic… about half what I expect. Crumb is tighter and moist. Almost like it is over-proved. However, I’m not getting the larger bubbles of gas at top where I’ve weakened the gluten structure.

Wondering if my starter is a bit off…

Wondering if I need to let rest on counter while I preheat oven…

Not sure.

Going to start another batch and simply pull bannetons from fridge when I turn the oven on. That should be my only variable I change.

The experiment continues…

Sourdough Croissants

Well … my writing has been on a hiatus; however, my baking hasn’t been.

Lots of bread, croissants and biscotti baked for family and friends.

Now I’m trying to get back to experimenting and looking to see how I can leverage time and temperature as variables.

From my reading I’m thinking that I may be under-proving my croissants. Going for 3 hours today at about 72°F

After proving and about to get egg washed

I’m also only baking one tray at a time. Think dropping ice cubes into a drink. I preheated my oven 25° hotter than normal and reset to allow for temp drop when I loaded the tray. I’m doing one tray at a time to lessen the amount that needs to come to baking temps (tray + croissants).

Not the honeycomb lamination I desire (yet)

Creating a Sourdough Starter (Part 2)

I am (finally) going to continue my thread on creating a sourdough starter. Happy to actually do this given that 10 days ago I totaled my motorcycle on a winding rode in western Georgia. God’s grace alone that I “walked away” and am not in the ICU or the morgue!

Where I left off I had mixed the diced apple with the flour and water and left it to ferment.

Here is what happened with the jar over the next 48 hours or so…

At this point I decided to take about a half of the starter (300g) and add the same amount of flour and water to it. This is a 1:1:1 ratio. I felt it OK to do this type of feeding since it looked to be so active.

As you can see from the photos the mason jar I was using got filled with almost completely. There would be no place for the starter to expand. Therefore, after feeding I discarded half of it. I wasn’t quite sure how it would work out….

Day 3 – Discarding and Feeding (and discarding half again)

Well… I needn’t have been worried. My starter grew just fine!

I did the above at 5pm and by 10pm this is what my starter was looking like.

As you can see at this point my starter is very active and doubled in just 5 hours. I put the glove on the top to tell me how active the CO₂ production happens to be. My starter will “wave” at me if it is going strong! Ha!

It was at this point that I transitioned this starter into a regular feeding schedule (which was then interrupted by my motorcycle accident).

Glad to be alive! Glad to be able to continue to bake and share what I’m learning with others….