Playing with sourdough

[Dutchoven]

Re: Playing with sourdough

Well the second two loaves are definitely better than the first.
1. What kind(s) of flour are you using?
2. When you say feeding, are you in fact doubling?
3. Where and at what temperature is your primary ferment taking place?
4. How cold is the fridge?
Starter should be active enough to bake in my opinion. the good news is it gets stronger with time. Store bought is sometimes somewhat fake, I have seen where some add vinegar to give the bread the sourdough tartness.
Best
Dutch

[rlf5]

Well since its been raining here the past 3 weeks and I couldn't tend to the oven construction, I decided to dabble in some bread making in my kitchen oven. I began a sourdough starter around 3 weeks ago according to the instructions in The Bread Bakers Apprentice. After about a week and a half of feedings I decided to make bread (basic sourdough recipe in the aforementioned book) with the half that usually gets discarded.

One of the initial problems I had was that the bulk rise really didn't rise too much. Maybe about 30-50% if that. Then the final proof didn't really rise at all. The first picture below is the finished product. Very little spring, dry crust, and VERY dense crumb. It seemed as if the only air pockets in the crumb were the giant caverns that weren't supposed to be there. The bread actually tasted quite well though.

So a week later I tried again. This time the starter looked a little more active than it was before. The bulk rise took quite a long time (4-6 hours) and this time rose to about 70%. I think i kneeded this batch better, but when I did my final proof (overnight in the fridge this time) it only rose maybe 50%. I put it in the oven (better steam technique this time as well) and got much better spring and color to the crust. After cooling I cut into it and while the crumb had improved it was still denser than I would have liked and still had the caverns. Again the flavor was good and the crust was actually edible this time. One good thing is a couple days later I bought a freshy made loaf of 'pain au levain' from Central Market and had it with dinner. My wife asked how I could get my bread to look like that (lol). But after eating the bread she said mine was much better than the store bought one...she said the store one tasted fake. Oh the pics of the second run are below as well.

So with this limited information, anyone have any pointers? I'm cooking the bread on firebricks that have been preheated in a 500F oven for 1.5-2hrs. Oh and I usually feed my starter the day before. Is my starter still not active enough?