Calling sourdough starter experts!

[stclair]

As I can’t find yeast for love nor money, I’m on day 3 of a sourdough starter (from bbcgoodfood recipe). What I am confused about is the pouring off of half the starter when ready to bake. Is this to be used to add more flour and water to keep the starter going? Otherwise It seems wasteful! If it isn’t, why pour it away?

Hi bob and other bakers. My first attempt - the foodbod recipe - was low and dense but delicious nonetheless. I tried again, using Bake with Jack's recipe and You Tube clips but my digital scale packed up on me mid recipe 😩. I had to more or less guess quantities and I think I put way too much water in because the dough was very wet. Nonetheless the loaf rose, had holes in the right places ... looked quite respectable. But had no taste whatsoever !

I now want to try Bake with Jack's recipe again, getting my quantities right. Anyone else following him? His videos are so clear and instructive.

I do love kneading they dough - can't understand why anyone would want to skip this part!

@Mominatrix,

Thanks- I included an autolysis step like you said, and used a stretch and fold technique. I still haven't been able to produce really big holes, but the results are definitely lighter.

Also I got some wholemeal flour and made sourdough with it. Just wow. The flavour is incredible. Something about the bran takes the edge off the flavour of the starter, which is really quite sharp, and the result is really mellow.

It's late autumn here, and the daytime temperature of my kitchen is about 15 degrees. I assume that's why my starter is so sharp.

Wow these look yummy.

Can I recommend doing an Airbnb sourdough class with a Baker! Helped me to perfect my starter technique and the actual bread baking, with things like the stretch and folding nailed to a tee.

Sorry I’ve been away from this thread for a few days . @ItsNotAboutTheChocolate I have watched a few of Bake with Jacks threads but not followed any of his recipes. He seems very convincing though.
Personally I have gone back to kneading. No knead bread just didn’t work out for me, and I do not mind kneading anyhow. I get that it would be an asset if you baked large volumes professionally, but for me the combination of a fiercely active starter which has repeatedly been fed over a short space of time, and not kneading just didn’t work. I suspect that the gluten was not developed enough because of the lack of kneading, and the dough could not sustain the volume of rising due to the very active starter. Both loaves were over-proved, dense and tough with a pale colour. Not good.
As for taste, I add in some rye flour at 20% because that gives sourish taste and that works for me. Good luck!

Can I also recommend Air on Cooked by netflix and matt.bomb.net for fool proof no kneed technique!

Here’s my latest loaf, used the river cottage method and baked under a cloche. It works better for me than no knead.

Reviving this thread to get some feedback on the recipe I'm using, which I created myself by lots of experimentation.

500g wholemeal flour
100g starter (made with 50g water 50g white flour)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
450 mls water.

• Soak flour in water overnight.
• The following morning add starter and salt and scrunch through.
• Stretch and fold periodically over 2 - 4 hour period (depending on what else is going on)
• When dough is smooth, shape and put into moulds to rise (I am using a ceramic mixing bowl lined with baking paper as I'm too disorganised (and tight) to buy proving baskets). Cover dough with teatowel.
• Let dough double in bulk.
• Put in fridge overnight.
• Heat oven to 240 degrees with a casserole dish inside. Lift risen dough in baking paper out of mixing bowl, put in casserole dish. Bake for 30 minutes, remove lid and bake for another 10 minutes.

The flavour is amazing and the crumb is fine, especially considering that it's 83% wholemeal. The only problem is that because the dough is so wet, it spreads during baking, which means I can't get the classic round shape. I don't think I'm getting much oven spring. Also the loaf, even after baking, is quite moist for a couple of days. Perhaps this is an advantage as it doesn't go stale so quick.

I would be grateful for people's thoughts.

Try baking for longer with the lid on. We love a crusty, slightly (or very!) singed loaf. 40-45 minutes with the lid on then 3-5 minutes without seems to be optimum for a loaf that size in my oven.

Try playing with the proportions a little bit. Just a tiny bit less water, a bit more white flour and less wholemeal might help with the spring and the spread.

I've had problems with my bread over-proving and not getting much oven spring, particularly in warm weather. Does it look very wobbly with big air bubbles before you bake it? If so it's definitely over proved. You can rescue it by knocking out the air and re-shaping, with a touch more flour if necessary.

You could try reducing the water content a little too. Play around with the ratios. Although whole meal is obviously a drier flour than white.

Your recipe doesn't say whether you score the loaf with a knife/scissors/lame?

@TomPinch that's a very high hydration level! You might want to try using less water, this will help it to hold shape in the oven and give you more spring.

Try around 68-70% of the flour weight as water (not including the starter). So 500g flour to 340gish water. This will give you a perfectly moist loaf still.

This dough will be dry enough to shape into a nice boule. You could try doing a "preshape" using a bit of flour for dusting your worktop and stretching and folding the dough into a ball and leave it on the side, seam side down, covered with a tea towel. After an hour - flip it over and shape it again then put it (smooth side down) into your ceramic bowl lined with a tea towel. Doing this will give you a bit of a skin with some tension in it that will hold when you bake. When you are ready to bake it, it will be firm enough to tip out onto your paper (so the smooth side is up), you can score it and plop that - using the paper as a bottom - into your casserole dish. For a 500g loaf I'd bake lid on for 45 mins at 240 then lid off and down to 200 for 10.

Sorry if this is a bit more detail than you were after!!

Hens how do you find it looks when you bake for that long covered? I normally take the lid off after 20 mins and then uncovered for 25 mins, out of the pot and on the oven shelf for 5-10 mins (but I do like a dark crust).

Thanks for the replies. Definitely not too much detail. I have this lifelong obsession with producing the perfect wholemeal loaf. It's an itch that has to be scratched.

The reason for the high hydration is for a lighter texture. When I started baking sourdough, back in April, I was trying to make something like a sourdough ciabatta. I never managed that, but read that higher hydration = lighter texture, and that was particularly important with wholemeal loaves.

I also found that unless I gave the dough a l o o o o n g time to rise, the flavour didn't really come through. I baked some perfect wholemeal boules, great oven spring, but they had no sour flavour and texture was heavy. I also baked one with some very old flour with a high bran content: the surface was pocked with little craters, and I think during baking, the water inside simply blasted its way out through the gluten, leaving behind something that looked like a deflated moon.

Anyway, high hydration plus long bulk rise means that what I put in the oven is an extremely slack dough, certainly too soft to score (the scoring just vanishes during the baking) and probably overproved. I let it rise in a mixing bowl lined with baking paper. Putting in the fridge overnight stiffens the dough, so I can simply pick it up in the baking paper and put it in the casserole. It sizzles and starts to spread immediately. But I will say that the end result is light enough and the flavour is amazing.

I think I will try reducing the hydration and keeping the long, overnight rise. I hope that will mean I keep the light texture and the flavour. This morning I baked a white loaf and a 50% white 50% wholemeal loaf with 75% hydration and they both have a nice shape. I haven't cut them yet, so disappointment could be in store!

Here's the white loaf.

I think you get it more sour with less starter and longer fermenting time.

@TomPinch - I usually bake a 30-50% wholemeal loaf and the max I've gone is 75% hydration and it's given me a great texture. I don't get the massive pockets of air, but then there's nothing to hold your butter .

Absolutely a long time in the fridge (I think this is bulk fermentation but it could be proofing time, I can't really see the difference) will give flavour. At the moment, my schedule is to feed my starter at bedtime then make dough at 8am ish and it's in the fridge by 2pm ish and I bake it at 9am or thereabouts, so it gets a good 15 hours + in the fridge which develops the flavour. You can also use wholewheat or(and) rye flour to feed your starter and increase the sourness - actually you're probably doing this as you bake wholemeal loaves.

Your white loaf looks great! This is one I baked the other day that was 20% wholemeal and 70% hydration. It tasted lovely due to the long fridge bulk.

@ScrambledSmegs maybe my oven is quite hot but they're usually nicely coloured with just 10-15 mins uncovered at 200-220. Actually I've been baking for much less time with the lid on because my bread is currently very springy so it's hitting the top of my pot! I think it's the warm humid weather... Here's a picture of the outside of that same loaf

@ScrambledSmegs oops forgot the outside picture... (apologies for the Instagramable posing - I'm competing with my father )

Well, I started this thread in the dark days of early lockdown and have only now managed to produce my first loaf of sourdough! Helped by a friend giving me a starter and a hand-hold. I don’t know what it’s insides will look like but it’s going on a picnic today so will soon find out!

Is anyone still doing sourdough?

Yes, I'm still going with mine.

Sadly not, I left my starter in the fridge and it went really mouldy so I had to Chuck it. I then started a new one but it made some ropey loaves and I lost heart. I do love sourdough, maybe I will try again, especially now flour isn’t such a precious commodity

Still going here. I have a wholemeal starter as well as a white starter now.

I've been baking 3 - 4 loaves a week, so I must have done well over 100 now.

Yes I am still baking sourdough. Started late June so not even a year has passed yet. It has been great learning to bake and now I’m quite consistent with my standard loaf. I bake 3-4 times a week and 2 loaves at a time.

I'm just doing once a week now, at the weekend, I managed twice when working from home but not now I'm back in the office.