A brand new commonplace sourdough recipe

I’ve had greater than my fair proportion of experimental failures currently! That is the curse of being an experimental baker. My failures of late have included, amongst others and going by my baking notes, a 90% biga with raisin yeast water that took too lengthy to rise, a sourdough made with a cool and stiff preferment, and a sourdough made at heat temperatures with a really very low inoculation. Some bakes have had whacky hydrations too…

So, I wanted to bag a win, and going by my baking notes once more I spotted that I do not even have a base-line bread recipe to return to anymore. For this bread I made a decision to play it protected, maintain the hydration down, give it a standard length ferment with an quantity of levain within the typical vary. And, on the similar time maintain an attention-grabbing flour base beginning with the concept of about 76% bread flour, 16% wholewheat and eight% rye which I picked up from Trevor J Wilson. Since my bread flour here’s a weakish 11.5% protein I did complement with some important wheat gluten and launched malt as nicely as a result of I like what it brings to each flavour and dough dealing with. And it has been some time too since I’ve completed a real autolyse, currently I have been including the levain upfront into the water for the ultimate dough, however I am nonetheless considerably on the fence whether or not that’s higher than a real autolyse. For this bake I introduced the autolyse again.

These breads have been then made with a two hour autolyse with no salt. Then the autolysed dough, the salt, and ‘solely’ 15% levain have been combined all collectively utilizing the dough hook just for 2 minutes, simply to combine the substances which is less complicated than by hand. I then gave it solely 30 slap and folds, which I choose to machine typically, so right here I’ve acquired a mixture of each machine and hand combine.

Then a small quantity of water was bassinged in, a few coil folds throughout the earlier a part of bulk and a longish bulk till pre-shaping of 5 hours, adopted by one other 2 hour 15 minute remainder of bannetons in proofer earlier than going into the fridge in a single day and baking the following day.

Though I did not do something wild with making these breads I used to be pretty experimental with the seed toppings. The one loaf had golden linseeds, whereas the opposite has white sesame, chia and basil (subja) which introduced in a savoury flavour.

It was good to take pleasure in bread with a delicate open crumb once more! And, when subsequent I deviate into the experimental wilderness, I will keep in mind this bake as a degree to return to for making breads that I like.

-Jon