Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread, an odyssey

From King Arthur

I was not heading in a good direction with this when disaster struck and the work in progress was destroyed. Tried again and so far it’s looking like a fiasco instead, in keeping with Karl Marx’s observation that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce.

Act 1: a tragedy

Autolyse / levain

• Built up a rye starter from my mini-starter in the fridge, used all rye flour, fed twice but on the same day. Seemed healthy when I added it to the autolyse?
• Used 100g KA medium organic rye, 260g AP flour for autolyse. Not sure whether to add more water to counterbalance the rye.
• Mix done at 9pm. Left it in the oven on proof (100F, just turned it on to preheat and then turned it off.)
• Stuck in the fridge, 12:30am. Levain looked hungry (had started to collapse a bit)
• NB: 2.5 tbsp table salt ~= 15 grams per this site. (I’m using kosher salt, it’s less dense so volume measurements aren’t precise)

Mix

• Overnight dough weighs 1247g - 344g bowl = 903g dough

• Pretty hungry looking. Def smells tangy.

• Not sure I kneaded enough. It’s fairly elastic but not extremely so. Not smooth, but cohesive. Hopefully the stretch and folds will work their magic.

• Bulk ferment started ~2pm, in oven on proof (100F), preheated and then turned off.
• 6:30pm (4.5 hours): even after stretch and folds, dough doesn’t seem very strong and is pretty sticky. Maybe this is the rye? It is rising nicely at least, doubling in size with no problem.

Disaster!

• Whoops! The oven was accidentally turned on with the dough inside, in a bowl covered with a plastic shower cap. Plastic melted into it. Not salvageable.
• Next time: will skip the rye flour and also knead much more in the beginning.

Act 2: a farce

Levain, mix, bulk ferment

• Being a little wary of how the dough was shaping up, this time I built up my starter with all AP flour instead of messing with rye (though the original starter is still mostly rye-based). Fed it twice, it looked healthy when I added it to the levain.
• After the overnight ferment, the levain is still looking hungry:
• Tried to knead the ever-loving heck out of the dough this time, but I had a lot of problems. I think I spent at least 20 minutes kneading but it still stuck to my hands and the bench every time I touched it, even with what seemed to me like a generous amount of flour on both.
  • Am I overcorrecting after reading about being careful no to add too much flour in this step?
  • Wound up using the bench knife a fair bit to reposition the dough. Dough stuck to the bench knife. Eventually I got it back in the bowl. it stuck to the bowl.
  • I suspect that that was the beginning of my misery.
  • I was hoping that some rest + stretching and folding during bulk fermentation would toughen it up a bit, but no.
• I’ve been resisting doing the “deflate” steps in the recipe, instead opting for a stretch and fold in the bowl, since I was doing other stuff on my counter at the time.
• Dough doesn’t seem to be getting much stronger over time. Smells amazing though.

Everything proceeded similarly to before except this time I elected not to cover the dough in burning plastic.

Divide, preshape

This was rough. The dough doesn’t seem nearly strong enough to preshape and sticks to every goddamn thing. It is still rising fairly vigorously, though:

• Looking back on that picture now, I feel like maybe a ton more stretch and folds are in order?
  • Dough rose a lot but is very wet-looking and gelatinous and wobbly.
  • There’s not a smooth surface at all
• This was a nightmare to “pre-shape”. It stuck to the counter. It stuck to my hands. It probably stuck to the surrounding air. I couldn’t really pick it up to move it without popping off some dough.
• I did cleave it in twain and bench-rest it for 10 minutes, after which it looked like this:

“Shaping”

Brutal. You can’t shape a thing that has no apparent surface tension. Eventually I basically poured the dough into my bannetons:

Not sure what to do now. Will wait to see if they rise. Maybe putting them in the fridge for a bit to tighten them up will make it possible to score them, but I’m dubious at this point.

• 9:53pm: popped them in the fridge. Maybe some cold temps will tighten them up? Going to try baking the boule tonight in the Dutch oven.

Results

Failure!

• 11:30pm: took the top of the Dutch oven off to find a wheat frisbee, ye gods. And here I thought your mother was flat. (Am I sure this was at 450F, not 350F?)
• 12:15pm: I may try to rent this loaf out to Odd Job.
  • Internal temp is a solid 206+ F.
  • Crust is a nice color (left it in for 10 minutes past the usual 20 mins covered + 30 mins uncovered in the Dutch oven)
  • Smells amazing. This is a failure but I can’t wait to cut it open.
  • Perfect pairing with my earlier biscuits. Maybe if I host guests from Flatland.
• Remaining bâtard is in the fridge. What is its destiny? Can I re-knead it at this late date? Is the gluten disintegrated by now?