Granary Sourdough

The weekend just gone was very quiet and relaxing, the complete opposite to this week – hence only getting the time to blog about this now! I baked two granary/malthouse sourdough loves, following the same recipe as usual.

Instead of 500gr of white flour (for 2 loaves), i used 300gr white and 200gr malthouse. This created a lovely malthouse loaf, although I think I could have upped the malthouse content to 60% as it was quite light on the granary-bits.

I’m starting to get used to the timings of sourdough and when you have a day to spare it actually makes a wonderful loaf compared to yeasted bread. The loaves were very tasty but turned out completely different shapes as they spread once again whilst on the peel. Again these were 68% hydration and I suspect this might be the cause, next time I’ll make it 65% and see whether they stay rounder.

Sourdough Take Two

I had the opportunity to make another batch of sourdough loaves today. I prepared the starter on Monday evening, ensuring that this time I baked with the starter 12h after it was refreshed rather than 24 hours. This doesn’t seem to have made much difference in the timing of the bread, it certainly didn’t happen noticably quicker than the previous attempt.

The dough was started at 8am and I finally baked the second loaf at 6pm. During the day I spent maybe 5 minutes weighing and mixing, 1 minute kneading and 5 minutes shaping. Very easy!

The dough was considerably less runny than the previous time. I threw in a handful extra of flour to ensure that it didn’t get so runny but I don’t think it was necessary. The loaves pretty much kept their shape, had some nice holes (but not as large as the last loaf – it wasn’t easy making sandwiches with it!) and taste delicious.

First Attempt at Sourdough

The starter survived well in the fridge and I removed it from the fridge, fed it, left it for 24h, fed it again, ensuring that there’s enough to make the loaf and have some starter remaining, left for 24h and then used some to make a small (500gr ish) loaf.

I’ve been following the White Levain Bread in Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf. I can’t find any information about it online to link to so buy a copy – it’s well worth the money. The loaf is still only a mixture of flour, salt, water and the sourdough starter.

The major change compared to yeasted bread is the time that it takes to make the loaf. I started at 9am and it’s not going to be baked until 9:30pm, 12 and a half hours in total. This is a bit difference to the recipe as before shaping, I put it in the fridge for 3 hours due to needing to go to the shops. I took it out for an hour to reach room temperature then shaped and put in a banneton.

The finished loaf is meant to be 68% hydration and so is quite a bit runnier than what I’m used to handling. Certainly it started to spread when in the bowl during bulk fermentation and when on the peel (before going into the oven) i was scared it would end up on the worktop! I can’t seem to work out what the cause of this was – suspect my starter was just a bit too runny for some reason and it ended up pushing the hydration of the dough above 68%.

One uncertainty is when during the 24hour period after feeding I should use the starter. It seems to be at its most active around 12h after and gone down to nothing 12h after that. Next time I bake, I’ll time the last feeding so that I can make the dough 12h after.

Also want to turn this recipe into something I can fit into a workday or two. Ideally I think the starter would be refreshed on the morning of day 1, then in the evening the dough made just before shaping, then the following evening shaping and baking. The last prove is meant to be 4.5hours and as I get home at 6pm, adding an hour of getting temperature out of the fridge and the baking would be around 6 hours of work, and I don’t want to stay up until midnight!

I fed the starter after making the dough and put it straight in the fridge. Don’t know if I should have left it out for a bit before refrigerating – some research online shows that there’s no real tried and tested method for anything so I need to experiment and see.

Starter Day 6

Tonight I came home from work and my starter had obviously got a bit excited during the day. The mixture had leaked all over the top of the fridge, down the fridge and onto the floor. Whoops. This is in part good news as it shows that I have a healthy culture growing in the jar but bad news as I don’t want to have to clean up after it every day!

I removed 3/4 then refreshed with 100gr water and 125gr flour. This time I put the orange seal on the jar to hopefully stop it from leaking but I got a little worried as within four hours it had started to expand towards to the top of the jar – maybe the pressure would build up and the jar would go bang!

So, after a bit of internet research I decided to remove all but 100gr of the starter, and I’ll refresh based upon this amount from now on. Therefore there will be 25gr starter or so saved for each refresh, topped up with 40gr water and 50gr flour (for now). This means that the starter in total will be around 125gr rather than the 400 or so it is at present. This should mean no more mess in the future and I can still remove enough to bake with, feeding that a couple of days beforehand. It’s also less of a waste of flour.

The starter is now in the bottom of the fridge as I’m going to get out of England and head towards the sun. Will be back on Thursday!

Starter Day 5

This morning the jar on the fridge had started to bubble and I looked forward to coming home tonight and smelling the developing starter. There was a definite sour flavour and it had started to bubble on the surface. I get the feeling I’m pretty close to something I can bake with now.

Next I discarded 3/4 of the mixture. Yesterday, I discovered that the jar weighs exactly 454g (1lb!) and so used the scales to be semi-accurate. Not sure if this is strictly necessary and I might do it by sight next time. Finally I added 100ml of water, stirred and then added 125gr of white bread flour, then stirred some more. Did it the right way around this time!

It now looks quite thick and according to the steps I’m following, the starter is complete. It should be bubbling nicely tomorrow and is ready to make bread. I’ll refresh it once more then I’m away for nearly a week so it’ll be living in the fridge after that. After that, it’s time to make some bread!

Starter Day 4

Day four now and things should have begun to start happening, at least according to the recipe. I have no idea myself whether this is the case as any changes are very slight! Once again it has seperated with the raisins at the top.

I removed 75% of the mixture, strained it, then added 100ml of water and 125gr of white bread flour. Afterwards I realised I should have added the water before straining it, hopefully this won’t have too much impact. The addition of this much flour has changed the consistency of the mixture considerably – it’s much more like the batters I create for commercially yeasted breads.

The lid went back on and now it’s back on the fridge waiting for tomorrow. Apparantly the fermentation will be clearly evident so I’m interested to see what it will look like then!

Apologies for the awful photos tonight, they were taken when it was dark and I had the wrong white balance set on my camera.

Starter Day 3

24 hours after step two, the started had seperated once again, with the water on top, as seen below.

I added another 100ml of water and 4tsp each of rye flour and white bread flour and stirred a bit more than I did yesterday. It had started to bubble a bit but the recipe says that this froth is down to the stirring rather than the yeasts. No noticable smell or any other activity to be honest!

After this it went back on the fridge until tomorrow.

Starter Days 1 & 2

It’s been 24 hours since I first began making the starter and it appears to be making progress. The water and solids have seperated and you can see a sheen at the top, as per the recipe (scroll down a bit). There’s nothing else that appears to have happened though!

Starter Day One

Next I added 50g of water and 2tsp each of rye flour and white bread flour and stirred. Then I took the photo below and realised I had to stir a bit more as it looked a bit lumpy in the picture.

After Stage 2.

I’ve now sealed it and it’s on the fridge waiting for tomorrow.

Conclusions So Far

I’ve been baking the same ‘white sandwich loaf‘ for the last 4 weeks with no real modifications to the recipe (save for quantity of dough created) and there’s a few things I’ve learned along the way. Here they are in no real order:

1. Steam is good for oven spring but if you don’t remove it from the oven then your loaves take longer to cook and don’t crisp up. I now remove the tray with water after 15 minutes and this has improved the loaves no-end.
2. It’s possible to overdo water in the oven. I’m not sure that it’s necessary to spray the sides of the oven as well as the water-in-the-tin trick, and certainly spraying the bread too much stops it from cooking. I wonder if the potential improvement from spraying after 5 and 10 minutes is outweighed by keeping opening the oven door and losing heat.
3. How long you leave the poolish for doesn’t seem to make too much difference. I’ve left it from between 3.5 hours to 10 hours with no visible difference in the bread. This goes against what I’ve read elsewhere so maybe I’m doing something wrong. The poolish is certainly an improvement from using yeast directly so it seems using one is more important than the time you leave it for.
4. Leaving the loaf to cool properly before putting it into a bag stops the crust from losing its crisp-ness. I leave mine overnight before covering after the first slicing and this seems to be the ideal trade-off between the bread staling quickly and the bread going soft.

The recipe has been updated to take into account the above.

Granary Loaf

Apart from when I first started baking, I’ve always been making white loaves. Reading (and writing!) about the same loaves time and time again isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, so today I did two things differently:

Firstly I made a granary/malthouse loaf, using some Doves Farm Organic flour which I picked up from Waitrose. This was the first time I’ve used wholemeal flour and so I made it with a total of 1/3 white, 2/3 malthouse flour so as not to end up with anything too heavy.

I recently bought a small jug and have been using this to find out when the dough has doubled in size. So to cater for this I’ve been making a bit more dough and then putting some in the jug and keeping an eye on it. However after the first prove I forgot to put it back into the jug and so it ended up in the final loaf. Oh well.

Loaf Size: 330gr flour in total.

Making the Batter

Room Temp: 19.9c. Things have been getting colder.
Water Temp: 35c
Time: 9:30.
Weather:Rainy.

Making the Loaf

Time Started: 5:00pm.
Room Temp: 20c.
Weather: Overcast.
Water Temp: 35.
First Prove Time (after kneading): 60 minutes.
Second Prove Time: 1hr 30.
Time water in the Oven: 15 minutes.
Baking Time: 30 minutes in total.

Comments: After last week’s disaster-which-wasnt-actually-a-disaster I decided to prove for longer. 90 minutes in total for the bulk fermentation, then another 90 in the banneton before baking. Probably wouldn’t have chosen this long but we were using the oven for other things so the bread had to wait.
Also, the weather has cooled since I started baking and so this has to be accounted for in proving times.

I didn’t steam this again whilst in the oven and again the loaf has turned out well. From now on I’ll keep the tray of water in the oven for 15 minutes but not spray 5 and 10 minutes into cooking.

I wasn’t sure on the mix of white to malthouse flour, so will see what 1/3 turns out like. Sadly this loaf is going into the freezer once cool so it wont be until the middle of the week when I find out!

Oh and the second thing, I’ve just got onto the long road of creating my own sourdough starter. Today I bought a kilner jar, added 50g currants, 2tsp of each of the following: live yogurt, rye flour, plain white flour and 50ml of water. Not sure what is required tomorrow but it will be interesting to see how it turns out.