Sourdelicious!

Even though I just created my sourdough starter on Saturday, and my recipe says that it won't be ready to use for bread for at least a week, I threw caution to the wind and started working on my first sourdough loaves yesterday.  From start to finish I failed to follow the recipe accurately and was generally acting like an enthusiastic incompetent, rather than the organized, disciplined person I'd like to become someday. 

I started by making the sponge from a ladle-full of sourdough starter and a whole bunch of flour on Tuesday morning.  If I had read the recipe accurately, I would have realized that I was supposed to let the sponge grow overnight, so I really should have started it on Tuesday night.  As it was, I didn't get around to working on the sourdough loaves until about 2pm on Wednesday.  During that time, my sponge had grown until it spilled out the sides of the bowl it was rising in, and then deflated a bit, and I have no idea how this has affected my bread. 

However, this has been a learning experience, if only about the amount of time and planning it takes to make a sourdough loaf, and I'm glad that I did this over the past two days, so I have an idea of how to budget my time in the future.  This afternoon, I made the dough and kneaded it by hand until it was smooth and stretchy and basically passed the windowpane test.  After ten minutes of kneading, the dough failed the windowpane test twice.  So when it mostly passed the test after about twelve minutes of kneading I decided to give up, for fear of overkneading the dough.  I theorized that it may have failed the test because the starter was so young and not enough yeast had grown yet, but I'm still not sure exactly how the amount of yeast affects the gluten in the dough.

After kneading, I shaped the dough into a round and let it rise for an hour.  My recipe - from the River Cottage Bread Handbook, more or less, since I subbed different types of flour - suggested letting the dough rise for four one-hour periods, reshaping the round between rising periods.  I did that, and the dough seemed to rise significantly during that time.

However, by the time I had shaped the dough into baguettes in anticipation of one final rising period before baking, it was seven at night and I was starving.  (I'm currently studying for the Oregon Bar Exam, and so I don't get out of the house much, especially not to buy food.)  That's when I realized that my recipe said to let the dough double in size, which could take anywhere from one to four hours!

I ended up cooking the first baguette after about one hour of rising, which was not enough to make it as light and airy as I wanted it to be.

I baked this loaf on my new baking stone (actually a paving stone purchased at Home Depot for $7.87, as opposed to $40 at a cooking supply store) in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then at 400 degrees for another 20 or so minutes, then at 350 degrees for a few more minutes.  I loved the golden brown crust, but the consensus (between me and my excellent roommate, Brooke) was that the crust was too hard after the bread had cooled.  The inside of the loaf also seemed a bit undercooked.

After I removed the first loaf from the oven, the other two loaves had been rising for nearly two hours, and had grown substantially (although I'm not sure they had doubled, exactly).  I decided to pop them in the oven while the stone was still hot, and hope for the best!  For this batch, I baked them at 450 degrees for about ten minutes, then reduced the heat to 350 for about 20 minutes.  After that, I reduced the heat to 300 degrees to prevent the crust from getting as hard as the previous loaf, and baked for a few more minutes.  Brooke and I both knocked on the loaves to test whether they sounded "hollow".  She said that they definitely sounded hollow, while I wasn't sure I liked what I was hearing.  We decided to take them out of the oven after about 35 minutes of total bake time.  They looked lovely.

This batch definitely didn't have as hard a crust as the first, and the inside was fluffier, but it still didn't seem cooked enough inside.  The loaves were also a little bit too salty.  I think that what I've learned from this is that: 1) I need to wait until my starter grows more wild yeast; 2) I need to let my dough rise until it is truly doubled in size, no matter how long it takes; 3) I need to use less salt than the recipe calls for; and 4) I need to follow my new temperature guidelines rather than those provided in the recipe.  I think that the main reason that my loaves don't seem well enough cooked is that they are too dense.  If I let them rise longer (and if the yeast is more active), I think that they will cook more thoroughly.  They'll also probably make a better "hollow" sound!

Finally, even though the loaves weren't perfect, Brooke and I were able to eat a fabulous (if bizarre) dinner of sourdough baguette, cheese, pepperoni (for her), artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and sliced melon.  And now that we've eaten all the food in the house, I think I have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.