My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

[WJW]

Re: My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

Thank you Faith! I'll give it a shot.

Bill

P.S. I do have a scale. I went out and got a digital designed with baking in mind and displays both grams and ounces.

[texassourdough]

Re: My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

Hi WJW!

Sounds like your starter is probably ready to try. It will continue to get better and more robust for some time. (Also more complex)

Faith's recipe is good. By weight I would suggest something like

Mix the preferment about 8 pm...
50 grams of starter
100 grams of water
100 grams of AP flour (preferably good flour - unbleached for sure - I like King Arthur among the commercial flours)(can also use 50 grams of whole wheat and 50 of AP as an alternate)
Stir it in a good size bowl until it is pretty well mixed and let it sit overnight. It should be roughly peaking the next morning - more or less...in any event it should be usable. NOTE: My expansion is 4X the weight of the starter. (I am assuming your starter is 100%, i.e. equal weights of water and flour. If wrong it is not a big deal)

Next morning mix the final dough. Here is where it gets a bit tricky. Wetter is better but assuming you have minimal bread experience that can cause you major grief. So I will shoot for 60 percent hydration of the final dough - i.e. water weight = 60 percent of flour.

Take the above (250 grams). We will add 1000 grams so final weight will be 1250. The total weight of flour will be 781.25 grams. There is 112.5 grams in the preferment so you need (rounding off) 670 grams of AP flour for the final mix. The total water will be 781.25 *0.6 or 468.75 grams. Again your preferment has 112.5 grams of water so you will need an additional (rounding off) 355 to 360 grams of water for the final dough. I would encourage you to weigh the additional flour and water separately.

While I like delayed salt addition, you can do it either way. In either case salt should be 2% of the total flour or 15 to 16 grams in this case - about 2 3/4 teaspoons of table salt. If you want to mix it early mix it in the flour before mixing the final dough. If you want to add it late, follow Faith's process.

Then take a bowl, add the preferment, then the water, stir to mix. Add the flour (with or without the salt). I like to mix my dough a bit more than to the shaggy stage - particularly if I am adding salt early...it will work. In any event, don't forget to add the salt!

A Google search will show the stretch and fold process. Faith's schedule is a great place to begin. I bake my loaves at 455 or so indoors for a total of about 35 to 45 minutes. You will want to have steam in the oven during the first 15 minutes or so of baking. For a first try, you can simply put ice cubes in an aluminum pie pan in the bottom of the oven. Longer term there are a bunch of better ways to do it. (As I wrote previously I like a cast iron skillet with lava rocks which I preheat with the stone. Then I put an aluminum pie plate with (drilled) holes on top with a cup of ice and let the ice melt/drip onto the lava rocks and cast iron to humidify the oven.)

Good luck! Either recipe should make fine first sourdough!
Jay

[WJW]

Re: My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

Thanks Jay. I've been out of town on business for the past couple of days. I'm going to try some bread tomorrow.

Bill

[WJW]

Re: My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

Don't know if I can get an answer in time to help...but I'm trying to do sourdough today. After reading all of the stuff about larger batches of bread working better in a WFO, I have decided to take that to heart. I am going to attempt Jay's recipe (with Faith's instructions regarding time) but I'm going to triple it.

Is there a problem with doing that?

I have also tripled the size of the preferment.

Also, is there a maximum size of dough batch that I can stretch & fold?

Thanks you guys.

Bill

[texassourdough]

Re: My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

Hi Bill!

The whole point of using bakers percentages is to make formulas expandable. My formula can be multiplied to any size you want.

Normal limits to S&F is around 50 to 80 pounds, maybe 100. You should have no problems so long as you have a tub big enough. I really prefer rectangular tubs for S&F as the shape is helpful in managing the dough. Be sure to oil the container with olive oil (or neutral vegetable oil).

Good Luck!
Jay

[Faith In Virginia]

Re: My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

How cool!!! Looking forward to some pictures.

[WJW]

Re: My first attempt at bread and making sourdough starter.

It worked out Faith and Jay. Thanks! I posted pics on the other thread.

Bill