smiling bread

My sourdough was shrieking at me to refresh! refresh! bake me! and I was a good sourdough mom and did. I started the dough last night and didn't have enough time for the preferment and ended up with too much time in the cold retardation stage and when I finally formed the dough I still didn't have enough time to let the gluten relax before shaping. I wanted a batard and ended up with a thing that was more like a boule in a batard couche. Good thing was that it fit in the big dutch oven and I didn't have to do the line-the-stove-with-stones-all-around bake.

After the first cold retard I shaped the dough put it in the fridge overnight and then got up at 5:20am to preheat the oven. I pushed everything a bit because I was going to get to work "early."

Recipe was my usual 65% hydration; 100 g, 100g, 300g, 325g, ~160g, and 2t salt.

Looks like it's smiling.

Since starting to document my same-old same-old breads and posting them here, I have found it to be helpful to go back through and see the photos and then re-visit the minor tweaks I might have made. I haven't done anything really weird like I did in the past but I think once winter comes again and I have more time (ha ha ha!!!!) I might go back to some of the weirder breads. Weird enough that Bill won't eat them if I say what I did but by the time it's baked the weirdness has been subtle-ized. Oh I'm having a craving for sauerkraut bread! That's not so weird. The blue cheese and anchovy bread keeps Bill from eating it. Yum and more for me!!!!!