24) Sourdough Sunday: flat topped

After the last exploding loaf, I decided to try introducing a little more consistency into the flour and water quantites, by following a standard recipe and subtracting my 'feeding' flour and water from those, rather than just eyeballing the whole thing.  I also wanted a single-risen loaf instead of my 'thrice-risen' version

Hmm. 

Feeding:

• Thursday evening: 0.5 cups of flour and 0.5 cups water.
• Friday morning: 1 cup flour and 1 cup water.
• Friday evening: 0.5 cups flour and 0.5 cups water.

The recipe:

I made the dough on Saturday morning (not forgetting to keep back my mini-starter; I'm sure I will one day, though!).  The dough was made from:

• all but 1 tbsp starter;
• 1.5 cups flour;
• no additional water;
• 1.5 tsp salt;
• 1.5 tsp sugar.

Part way through kneading in the machine, it looked too wet, so I added an extra half cup of flour.  It still seemed wet-ish, but I didn't want to mess too much with my 'approved' recipe so, in the interest of experimentation, I let it be.

I expected it to rise all day, but after only a few hours, it was clear it wouldn't need to.  So I shortened the wait time, and let it bake.  The top, which was nice and rounded, had started to 'drop' a mere 10 minutes after the bake started.  This either means the dough was too wet, or it had over-risen (which can be caused by the dough being too wet, and therefore not sufficiently structural).  As might be expected, the crumb is very open:

This loaf tastes very, very good, though.  It's not notably sour, and it has that delicious crumpet-like flavour going on that I noticed in the exploding loaf.

Next time: a bit more flour?  A second knead??

Comments

[Leigh]

Never a dull moment with bread baking. I always figured my fallen tops were due to not enough flour. I hadn't thought about the number of kneads and rises. Something to experiment with, that's for sure.