I thought I had solved my bread problem, and had high hopes for my most recent batch,1 but it was not to be. The dough was just incredibly sticky. Not slack, sticky. It clung tenaciously to hands, bowl, scraper, worktop; I really felt completely unable to manipulate it. I did, gingerly and with extra flour, manage to form a sphere of sorts and to plop that, upside down, into a little basket I bought at the local plant nursery. Lined with a clean towel and liberally dusted with flour.
I left the formed loaf in its basket out on the counter (at 30℃) for about an hour, maybe more. It rose quite a bit in that time. Then I put it into the fridge overnight at 4℃. In the morning it was still risen, so once the oven had heated up I carefully inverted the basket over a baking tray and was horrified to watch it spread out like something that had just plopped from a cow’s bottom.
Hurriedly I slashed it, vaguely thinking that perhaps it had all this hidden potential to spring, and bunged it in the oven with a steaming pan of water below. I didn’t even grant myself time to photograph the plop.
It barely moved during the baking. Spring? Hah! Overdeveloped for sure.
Much disappointed I stuffed it in the freezer for a rainy day, and dove back into the internet to investigate further. The good people at The Fresh Loaf suggested other options, which I am doing even as I type. The starter now has feasted on strong flour, and rather than 20% I used only 10%. I allowed 30 minutes to hydrolyze and then folded in the bowl. I’ve been doing that every half hour for three hours, almost, and it is now time to shape. I shall retard the loaves overnight, and bake them directly from cold in the morning.
The flat loaf, however, had its moment in the sunset sooner than expected. I had been planning to go out for a bite with some friends. In the event, so many places are closed that I offered to cook. Out of the freezer came the loaf, into the oven for 10 minutes just before we ate just to crisp up the crust a bit, and it went down a treat.
Handsome is as handsome does, as I once read in a book on training lurchers.
Footnotes:- Based on 500 gm total flour, at 60% hydration, using 20% starter. [↩]