long-time reader first-time bread-maker

i haven’t kneaded in years. with sourdough it’s all stretch n fold.

i am on day 2 of the flour water salt yeast (i keep wanting to say salt fat acid heat) levain process. it uses SO much flour. but it's working. it has more than doubled in size in 10 hours after i re-fed it for the first time. it's alive! weird how every book uses a totally different process though.

yeah i pretty much abandoned flour water salt yeast because you either end up wasting a bunch of ingredients or have to plan ahead to make more things with the leftover levain.

sourdough waffles are an EXCELLENT use of leftover starter/levain

we’ve been making sourdough basically since right after lockdown began and have yet to run into this “leftover starter” problem

for this one i haven't yet reached the stage where i have starter. each day you have to throw away 75% of what you have and add 500 grams (2 cups) of flour. i'm on day 3 of 5 (?). you can then keep a smaller amount of starter. i don't eat enough bread to make more than a loaf a week so i will be refrigerating but i plan to make pretzels and pancakes soon.

Yeah having a growing kid who loves sourdough requires two medium-ish loaves a week so that’s driving us

successful pain de campagne, ignore all the crumbs on my stovetop. i avoided burning the bottom this time, maybe helped by parchment paper and/or a little less time in the oven.
https://i.imgur.com/8qgx8zv.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/NBrXMBr.jpg

wow that looks like the fucking business

it's really tasty and the texture of the crust is great. i'm going to make another recipe "field blend #2" with my bf tomorrow, might try a batard shape in my oval dutch oven. i have just a small bag of whole rye flour, i can't find a place to buy 5 lb bags of it other than online.

i have another book my brother got me for xmas that has a lot of scandinavian and german breads made with dark rye flour

does anyone here have a good bagel recipe, ideally a good sourdough-based bagel recipe? i've made them a few times and they're pretty good but not great. i suspect a lot of it has to do with me doing a bad job of forming the bagels in a way that overworks the dough, but it could also be the recipes i'm using

hmmm, no sour but i've made these about 4 or 5 times the last couple years:
https://serenalissy.com/new-york-bagels/

i've never gotten the toasted-on-the-outside/chewy on the inside i'm after, but they come out fairly well and satisfy a bage jones. ftr, i did cross-reference with another recipe i found and they were basically identical, so just kept the one. you could just make the dough a couple days ahead of time to get a little sour thing going i guess? think i may try that come to think of it.

curious to see another recipe if you have one convenient to hand, NA. i sort of developed my own technique for forming bcuz the directions did not make sense to me, or rather, seemed to complicated. i just make little rolls from the dough then stick my thumb through and pull 'em apart, sort of the same way i learned how to work with pizza dough.

i've used a couple of different recipes but i've just googled sourdough bagels and gone from there. they usually turn out OK but a bit too dense. i learned the first time that you can't get a dozen bagels out of a batch of dough, they end up too small. i've used the bagel forming technique you mention but then i try to smooth them out and that's when i think they get overworked. the last time they came out of the water nice and big but then deflated a bit after baking, which i believe is an indication of overproofing? i've only made them a few times so i think it's mostly just a matter of a) finding a good reliable recipe and b) making them enough times to get the technique down

I had never made bagels until a couple of weeks ago. I tried this recipe and they came out beyond anything I expected:

https://www.theperfectloaf.com/sourdough-bagel/

Now a word of warning: this guy is kind of a jackass imo - he lists ingredient quantities like "429g flour" - as if it's an architectural project. Try not to get thrown by all that. Essentially you're making a stiff sourdough bread with an extra boiling step. That's it.

The day they were baked they were just freakishly good. Subsequent days, and after a freeze and thaw, they were still good but pretty standard.

thanks, Tracer! bread flour seems logical. and i love the shaping pics. am definitely gonna use this recipe as a guide next time.

By the way, I didn't have any 'barley malt syrup' (!?) so I found some thick, gooey date paste and used that instead. It worked great. You could probably use molasses or even honey or something.

I also didn't use any diastatic malt powder. Sue me.

yeah i've used maple syrup as a sub before. thanks tracer

comcast is working on something and internet keeps going out intermittently (it's on now obv) therefore i "can't work" and will make a raisin bread

i'm on day 2 of the three-day bagel recipe. i formed them with the snake method this time and i think i prefer it, even if my bagels still turned out a bit lopsided.

omg. tell us how it turns out!

the swirl doesn't appear because this is near the end of the loaf but this worked a lot better than the last time. i wasn't so fearful of overkneading (i was using standmixer and just let it go and go until i reached the required texture), which led to a much stronger rise. and used 8.5x4.5 pan instead of 9x5.
https://i.imgur.com/CJ73yqg.jpeg

i mean last time it was too dense, tasted fine though

That looks wonderful

i am going to make some loaves this weekend. have been feeding my starter regularly to get it ready instead of what has become my habit of just every few days. i want to put in some seeds, maybe one rye with caraway and one with sunflower. does it absorb too much of the water or do i just add them without worrying about that? also looking for some new flour ratios. i have whole grain spelt and rye.

by weekend i mean wednesday because i am only working today and tomorrow #veterans

ok i have discovered you need to soak the seeds. i am looking forward to this seedy adventure.

i made a pretty good rye, caraway, beer and honey loaf from claudia roden’s Book of Jewish Food at the weekend. i think it needed to be slightly more hydrated but it tasted great.

Oh, we have that book! What would you do different next time?

so the recipe says to add only enough beer 'to make a dough that holds together.'

i took that pretty literally (and followed the quantity guidance, which was 125ml water, ~350ml of beer - so very low hydration), but i the dough was just too dry and crumbly (and absolute murder to knead). I'd add slightly more liquid to get a more elastic dough next time. she does say in the next paragraph not to add too much flour in the kneading stage as the dough is intended to be 'a little sticky compared with white bread dough,' so i was a bit wtf Claudia make up your mind.

weekend sourdough here - heavily floured because FUCK ME it keeps sticking, which makes. me. mad.

https://i.imgur.com/RtWhMqi.jpeg

slightly crumbly rough looking rye here:

https://i.imgur.com/yTuqABW.jpeg

(smells and tastes great mind)

Yeah I was thinking when I was reading that that the fragrance alone would make it a really nice bread (for someone else in the house) to make especially as it’s pretty cold rn. As ever, your sourdough looks very good!

made this, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/kansas-sunflower-bread-recipe , just came out of oven 30 min ago so i haven't cut into it yet. instead of 361g white bread flour i did 201g AP flour, 80g white whole wheat, 80g spelt (i believe this flour is "sprouted" but i'm kind of confused by the label from the bulk place). i always get dough that is too wet from these recipes, it won't even make a ball in the mixer, added back another 1/2 cup or more of AP flour. it looks like a very tall loaf, the tallest i've ever made, so i don't think anything went wrong.

ok here is photo.
https://i.imgur.com/Nr2fq8E.jpeg
great-tasting bread, perfect density, but a bit crumbly. probably because of aforementioned flour adding. i'm just afraid of very wet dough. but this was not just very wet, it was way too wet. no one would have been able to knead it. i am going to try letting it sit after mixing next time. especially with the whole grains. this would be a nice tuna fish sandwich or grilled cheese bread. i just toasted it and had it with some peach jam.

yum

that is amazing.

kept on forgetting to feed my starter so instead have been making (very nice) rye, beer and honey bread.

did make my first batch of sourdough for the first time in a while over the weekend though. i fluffed it a bit, so it hasn't risen as much as i'd've liked, and the first loaf could have done with longer in the oven, but on the whole am quite pleased.

https://i.imgur.com/yO68uSJ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ePN4O2A.jpg

most importantly of all, it tastes great, with the crust approaching the taste of my favourite bought sourdough (before they shut down).

wow that crumb is gorgeous.

you're courageous to prove straight in the banneton with no liner! early in my baking adventures i got burned a couple of times and never went back. i should though. those bullseye patterns are so nice.

this book just came out. it's great. a bit of a history of the bakery, pictures of impossibly attractive young people making bread yada yada but the back half of the book lays it all out there. the nuts and bolts of every variation on sourdough you can think of, and some others besides. i took a day-long lesson there a couple of years ago and the person teaching us said their philosophy is that 'there are no secrets in bread baking'.

https://e5bakehouse.com/e5-book/

thanks tracer, yes, i was pleased with the crumb, given it didn't rise as much as i'd hoped. after really losing my shit with my carefully constructed loaves *sticking* whether on cloth or direct in a banneton, and spending ages on the internet trying to work out how to stop this happening, I have decided the key is... use a shit-tonne of flour. you can always brush it off before it goes in the oven if necessary (though the above ones have worked out fine without brushing). Also, if your bannetons are relatively new, worth spraying them on the inside with water and roughing them up a bit a few times so that when they're dry the flour sticks on all parts of the basket.

book recommendation looks good. it's really helpful when people avoid mystique and are just very clear on hints and tips etc. very easy for skilled people to get a bit 'guild secrets' about these things, or 'this is the way it *should* work' when experience teaches you something different.

Couple of things I'd rectify next time:
1) don't put them in the bannetons upside down, so that you have to take them out and put them back in the correct way up (which is upside down confusingly). I think this broke some of the structure hence them being flatter than i would have liked
2) i just think they need longer in the dutch oven. it's not creating as much steam as I'd like before I take the lid off to get the crust.
3) Oh and my structuring isn't always great. I think this is partly to do with the instructions I'm using which are fine if you want an oblong but not if you want a circular loaf. The 'creating tension against the seam' bit just isn't working for me at the moment.

Things I still don't really understand.
* They're not really *springing* up, so that where you've made the cuts you get a nice explosion. With yeasted loaves I'd've said I'd overproved them, but i don't think that's the case for sourdough? It may be an issue to do with structure or indeed that initial oven temperature.

first thing is i’d make sure your starter has enough oomph. at one point i realised that if i refresh it the night before making the leaven it has a lot more power. i just refresh and stick in fridge.

you should put them in the bannetons upside down i.e. seam side up so that you can plop them onto a piece of parchment paper by just turning over the banneton. i’ve learned you don’t actually have to be gentle on this step! you can really just whack them out plop. you do need to score them and get them into your dutch oven or into a baking stone pretty quickly though because they will spread.

in the pics i can see that they crusted over a bit early - they haven’t got that really explosive “ear” that is the proof if you like of a good spring. two things on this 1)you need maximum amount of steam, like you say. give it a good 20 minutes, even 25 in the dutch oven with the lid on. 2) you might consider adjusting your oven to just use the bottom heating element for those 20 minutes so that the tops of your loaves don’t get too hot too quickly and crust over. with a dutch oven i’d think that wouldn’t be a problem because the lid would provide some protection but something to try maybe.

for shaping a circular loaf i get my hands floury and sort of twist the dough on the counter, any direction you like, which usually plumps it up a little bit. you may need a scraper to help along any little bits. then you can lift an edge of this mass, stretching up and then folding towards the center and kind of poking it into the middle. like a flower petal sort of, that’s shutting itself down for the night. do that all the way around so you’ve got a little package. may need the scraper to help with this. and use your scraper to help lift that off the counter and you can lay in the banneton just like that, with your flower petal seams on top. i usually like to lay it first in some dusting flour before the banneton just to make sure it’s got a good layer there.

for pre-shaping your “boules”, this guy is my god:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEG1BjWroT0

i don’t do what he does for the final shape, but his pre-shape is so unbelievably satisfying and efficient and it’s not hard to get down.

one big tip for that pre-shape? put ZERO flour on your countertop. this will help create that tension you need. otherwise it just slides around.

Soda bread in our house today, came out just right

https://i.imgur.com/3a3tb9f.jpg

Nice, texture looks great. Is that a mix or did you have a recipe?

Uh id need to ask the house tbh, shes currently waspish over an email tho

Oh i read the question again, no shes mixing her own from some recipe

Nice loaves fizzles! On the mystery lack of spring - Tracer otm about making sure your starter is at the right point & lively. Maybe try cutting proofing time too, just to check on the over-proofing? Or work the dough a bit more early on to develop gluten and build the strength to handle the proof.

That is a very useful pre-shape video Tracer - I've generally just done 'shaping, but less so', but will try that pushing-around with the scraper next time.

I've found shaping the hardest part to nail. It's got better incrementally with a few factors changing - mature starter, I've got better at building strength, learnt how to handle dough better (flour hands over and over, don't be timid with it and work quickly - treat it like you're confidently handling something very hot, I read somewhere).

I used to go seam side up in the banneton, but I was reading the Forkish book late last year and he says seam side down, bake with seam side up. I've been trying it - not sure there's a huge difference. Slightly better crumb in the middle maybe.

Had been thinking about getting a thinner crust & got lost in this thread yesterday. Fascinating gluten knowledge.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/54803/chasing-thin-crispy-not-thicktough-dough