ok ok

Less frequent baking requires strengthening the starter with a couple of feedings before a bake. Good to get back to it. I think I shape differently now, cause they turn out a bit square, but charming.

Loved the scoring today.

Another day, another bread.

Recipe:

650gr wheat flour (weak nonsense flour, cause that's what exists here), 425gr water, 200gr starter, 13gr salt

Method:

Dissolve salt in boiling water and let it cool down to at least body temp. Add starter to the baking bowl, with the flour and the saltwater. Mix and knead well for approx. 5min. Rest 15min. Knead 5min. Rest again for 15min. At this point, pinch off 200gr of dough for the starter for the next bread - no feeding, no fuss, no discard and you already have a starter that is comfortable with the salt levels of the bread it's supposed to make rise. This also doubles as dough for my aliquot jar, so I can see what percentage increase I'm at. I generally measure the height of the dough in the jar, then mark off current level, 50% increase and 100% increase with a whiteboard marker.

After securing the starter for my next loaf, I do a coil-ish fold on the remaining dough, and follow up with more coil-ish folds at 30min intervals for a total of five. Temp regularly and bulk ferment approximately in accordance with the Sourdough Journey's chart. My dough does it's bulk fermentation mostly in the oven with the light on, cause my house is cold. I've found that I generally need to push bulk fermentation a little further than what the chart says, but I think that is down to the difference in hydration.

Preshape when it's at the right percentage rise for the average temperature it's held during bulk fermentation, often 6-7hrs for me. Let it rest on the bench for 30min-1hr, then shape and place in a floured banneton. I use coarse rice flour. Then it spends the night and a bit in the fridge (12-16hrs). If I want to bake again the next day, I leave the starter on the counter and it's ready in the morning. If I want to wait a day or three - it goes in the fridge.

Våren er her og det er så nydelig. Ferskt brød gjør det bare bedre.

Spring is here and that's so lovely. Fresh bread just makes it better.

Start with small doughs. A lot of recipes call for a full kilogramme of flour, and that's just silly. Too big bread anyway and way more waste when things go wrong.

Get a banneton that fits a dough of that size. I started out with a ridiculously huge banneton, because for some reason that's all that was commercially available here. Thus I HAD to make big doughs to fill the damn thing. Downsizing did more for my results than pretty much anything else.

All aspects of your sourdough will be subject to your environment. Flour strength, hydration, temperature, dough ratios... They all inform each other. It's fucking annoying. I read that if I wanted to skip the autolysis, I could reduce the starter percentage to 10%. That poisoned the well for me for a long time. My starter is so slow because of the flour I feed it, the salt, and the ambient temperature of my home, that a 10% starter took way to much time to double. Like 48hrs +. 30% starter is what works for me this time of year if I want to skip autolysis. It still takes the starter 20 hours to double.

Preshape your damn loaf, even if you're just baking one. It needs the strengthening of the gluten network. Preshape, let it rest between 30-60min (again depending on the conditions of your sourdough), then shape and put it in its banneton.

I currently preshape when the starter has increased about 50%+. That works well for me rn. Come summer it might be a whole different ballgame.

I am not entirely patient enough to deal with how seasonal changes in the fucking weather impacts the process of fermentation. OBVIOUSLY IT DOES, but can't we just skip to the part where I've done this for years and have it in my fingertips and I don't just end up with extra waste from trying to prevent waste??