[redforever]

Originally Posted by Canada 02

^ so I followed the recipe on the link (http://pinchmysalt.com/how-to-make-sourdough-bread/),
and made a very tasty sourdough. The only problem was the bread was maybe 1.5-2 inches thick. How do I get more of a rise? My starter is like a runny pancake batter, and the dough was pretty sticky. I also knead by hand as I don't have a kitchen aid or other mixer

So here are my results and comments about the sourdough featured at that link. I wanted to see how my starter would work with that recipe and made the bread a couple of weeks ago.


I mixed up the ingredients for the sponge as per the recipe. The recipe said to leave the sponge for at least 2 hours and up to 8 hours. I left mine for 3 hours and at that point, it had risen somewhat, it had bubbles on the surface, and it looked like it was ready to be used.


Then I added the rest of the ingredients as per the recipe and kneaded the dough at a medium low speed for 6 to 8 minutes. The dough had cleared the sides of the bowl very nicely but still seemed too tacky when looking at it.


I tested the dough with my fingers and still thought it was too tacky but decided to let it be for now and see what it would be like after the next proof. I like to follow a recipe pretty closely when I am trying it for the first time.


I thought the dough would be sticky and hard to shape into a ball so I coated an area of my kitchen counter with cooking spray and then dumped the dough on top the sprayed area. The dough was somewhat loose but it never spread all over the place either so I decided to continue on and not modify the dough at this stage.


I was able to shape the dough into a ball without much difficulty. However, the dough, even though it was very soft, took a good 3 hours to double in size before I could go on to the next stage of shaping the loaf.


When I turned the proofed dough out and started to shape the loaf, I knew for sure the dough needed more flour. The loaf was not keeping its shape and was spreading sideways almost immediately. I patted the dough down, sprinkled it with 1 to 2 Tbsp flour, and kneaded the flour in by hand, repeating that process until I felt the dough was the right consistency. I added about 1/3 cup more flour. Then when I reshaped the dough into a loaf, it seemed like it was strong enough to hold its shape. This is how the loaf looked when I felt the dough had enough flour so the loaf would hold its shape.


I did not want to add more flour and end up with a dense loaf but I was still worried it would spread sideways, so I decided to make a couche and let the loaf go through its final proofing that way. I put a piece of parchment paper on top my pizza peel, put the loaf on top the paper, and then rolled up hand towels and placed them on each side to control which way the loaf was going to rise. Then I covered the loaf and let it go through its final rise or proof.

You could certainly use a floured cotton or linen tea towel instead of the parchment paper, but I like the disposability factor and ease of use of parchment paper. Using parchment paper also makes the process of transferring the final loaf to the oven much easier. By the way, if you don’t have a pizza peel, invert a cookie sheet and put the parchment on top of the bottom of the cookie sheet and proceed from there.


It took almost 4 hours for the loaf to double in size. If you compare the two pictures, you can see that the loaf did expand quite a bit both in height and length.


I removed the towels so I could slash the loaf. It spread sideways a bit when the towels were removed but certainly not significantly. It also held its shape when the loaf was slashed so I was satisfied with the consistency of the dough. Maybe I could have added 2 Tbsp more flour.


Next I baked the bread but I never baked mine at 450F as the recipe suggested. That temperature seems too hot for the Calgary area when I have previously baked bread at that temperature. I baked mine at 425F for 15 minutes and then turned the temperature down to 400F and finished baking the loaf at that temperature. My total baking time was about 35 to 40 minutes. It got nice oven spring and turned out well. Oh, I did bake it on a bread stone that was preheated along with the oven.


This is what the crumb of the final baked loaf looked like. The crust was fine and you can see that both the thickness of the crust and the color of the crust is uniform over the whole loaf. The bread tasted fine and had good sourdough taste. However, I never felt that this bread had the chewy texture that I normally get with my sourdough bread nor did it have the chewy texture that one would associate with San Francisco sourdough bread.

Anyhow, the process took me a whole day and in the end I never got better results than baking sourdough bread with my own recipes and method. Now as I have mentioned before, all starters are different and behave differently so perhaps the long process was due to the starter that I used. I guess it depends on what gives you the best results for the time and effort you are willing to put in.


This is the crumb of some of my peasant sourdough bread that I baked recently. Can you see that this bread looks much chewier than the photo above? Can you see that the strands of dough have sort of stretched but are still bonded together? Can you see that this crumb just looks more elastic overall?