A dissertation on sourdough

If you are not a bread nerd, this may be a boring post. I am mainly posting it to keep track of what I did, to help improve my baking.

This was my second attempt at Wild Yeast's Norwich Sourdough. This time, I replaced part of the white flour with whole wheat, but kept the amount of rye the same as in the original recipe. (I am not the most scientific baker: I didn't keep track of how much whole wheat I used. I guess about 1 part WW to 3 or 4 parts AP.)

I divided the dough into 4 roughly 500 gram loaves. Two were baked after 2 hours in the fridge, the other two were baked after about 12 hours in the fridge. (They were baked straight out of the fridge.) None of the loaves got much oven spring, but the ones with the longer fridge time were noticeably flatter than the others. Given the mix of flours I used, I probably should have added a little vital wheat gluten (since I was using AP flour and not bread flour).

I increased the baking times a little, because the recipe is written for 400 gram loaves. The bottoms of the loaves got pretty badly burnt. (I've been having this happen a lot with my baking stone recently. I have a hunch that it has something to do with my new habit of sliding things in on parchment paper and leaving it there for part of the baking time. I've also been meaning to get an oven thermometer.)

The bread's texture was great, but the flavour wasn't as sour as I would like. (I've only tasted one of the short-rise loaves so far.) This may have to do with my starter, which I had only taken out of the fridge and fed the day before. Next time I might increase the out-of-fridge proofing times somewhat, to make up for my wimpy starter. Too-warm temperatures can decrease sourness, but I don't think that was the problem.