I have a recipe I've found and like making because the crumb regularly turns out nicely for me, but I'd like it if the final loaf was a little bit bigger. If I wanted to scale up the recipe to make a 10% bigger loaf, would it be fine to just scale up each of the ingredients by 10% and bake it a little longer? Is there anything else I need to do? Any sort of formula for estimating changes to baking time?

Felt like something sweet. The shaping is based on the accordion bread by autumn kitchen (YouTube https://youtu.be/hLlaB2jacKE).

All of the dough was mixed in the mixer with the sweet matcha paste. Then the dough was split in two and cocoa paste was added to half of the dough, and the two doughs were joined together by following the accordion bread video method. White chocolate and some dried pineapple as inclusions.

This was a fun bread too make. I used a raisin yeast water rather than sourdough here because of all the sugar. Next time I'll up the matcha to get more colour yet and more matcha flavour.

Did them both in dutch ovens, mostly followed King Arthur's "Naturally Leavened Sourdough" recipe with some extra water. I didn't slash them very well, but they still rose quite nicely~

We’ll see soon if I added enough rosemary to make it count as a rosemary loaf.

I bake weekly using a levain. I preserve about 25g from the levain in the refrigerator as my starter. There seem to be two choices for how to do this:

1. After feeding the old starter to begin the levain ferment.

2. After the levain has fermented.

So I conducted an experiment. I now have two 25g starters in my refrigerator. The first is fed but not fermented. The second is fed and fermented.

Visually these starters are quite different. (1) is ‘ bready’ and full of bubbles. (2) is soupy and no visible bubbles, but on close examination there are fine bubbles in it.

Baking the same recipe for each I get approximately identical results.

As far as I can tell it makes no difference which method I use.

My wife and I are looking forward to learning how to maintain our starter and bake with it!

I like my focaccia thick.

So, I want to play with making a levain, which I’ve never done before, and I’m drawn to this recipe: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pain-au-levain-recipe mostly because I have used other King Arthur recipes with a lot of success. The thing is, it calls for pumpernickel flour and my spouse isn’t a fan. So can I just replace it with the same amount of… Whole wheat flour? Or just white all purpose flour? Or does that not really work and I need to find a new recipe?

Thanks!

I am realizing that my bread knife is not strong enough to handle the crusts on my loaves and it’s impossible to get through the bread much less evenly. What bread knife do you use/would you recommend? Is it just a matter of sharpness or are there other factors to consider?

So, everywhere I look people are saying “getting an ear is easy! Just score it all the way across with a 30 degree angle. It’s so easy!” But what does 30 degrees mean‽ 30 degrees from what? 30 degrees from the table it’s sitting on? Is it the angle of the blade as it enters the dough, or it is 30 degrees up the surface of the dough? Or something I’m not thinking of? Any help would be awesome. Thanks!

As for me, today Iam getting back to making sourdough things and starting a new starter, after being on pause for a year and a half. I look forward to eating my own delicious bread again and would love to see what you made for inspiration!

Made these yesterday and they turned out perfect. This recipe is now my holy grail biscuit recipe. Recipe source: https://littlespoonfarm.com/sourdough-biscuits/

After an overnight cold proof in the fridge these were baked the next morning, with a single difference in how they were handled. The loaf on the left with white sesame had an hour in the proofer whilst the oven heated, and the one on the right stayed in the fridge. They were baked together side by side on my baking steel and did touch in the oven.

Odd that it is the one with the ear! A bit counter intuitive that the loaf on the right didn't open up as cleanly even though it had an hour less of "warm" fermentation. It could also be that the loaves touched in the oven and that changed things.

Sometimes, when we do these slight difference tests we don't learn much.

Enjoyed eating these. 10% of the flour was wholemeal einkorn and the other 90% was of a very interesting sifted white bread flour (that contained a lot of red wheat in it) as can be seen by the colour of the crumb.

Hi all,

So I'm doing experiments to see how 'effortless' I can make fresh sourdough.

I have a dream - and maybe this can't be reality - of doing the cold ferment in a baneton, then transferring that to the freezer for long-term storage.

Has anyone managed to freeze a fully-proofed loaf before baking?

Sourdough experiment #4. Crust turned out well, wanted to capture the crust and crumb of this one for future reference (Excuse the YouTube link, I have nowhere else to share yet).

• 65% hydration (trying for a more sandwich style loaf).
• 1.7% salt
• 20% starter
• 22º-25º bulk ferment (5 hours + shape and 1 hour extra rise)
• 36 hour cold ferment
• Straight in to 250º oven
• Turned down to 240º
• 20 minutes baked covered with steam
• 15 minutes on the rack at 230ºC
• 30 minute rest in open oven

I am including a recipe that I wrote up for my niece.

This is a recipe that I have been perfecting over the last several months to work with my weekday schedule. The timing of the recipe is perfect for when you just don’t have time to put in all of the steps. It is an All-In-One recipe so all of your ingredients go in at the same time.

Ingredients 810 grams bread flour - I use King Arthur 90 grams einkorn - Jovial brand is my go to and available at Whole Foods 18 grams salt - fine sea salt combines nicely 180 grams starter - Feed 1:3:3 the morning you are going to put your dough together.1 603 grams water - room temperature

Mix all of your flour and salt well with a whisk then add your starter and water and then mix using a pull and fold motion until it is combined and then continue for a bit. I go for a total of 4 minutes. What I do to keep the dough from forming a skin and drying out is cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and then cover that with a plate

In 1 hour do your first stretch and fold. With my gluten strengthening moves I go less aggressively as I go along. I am stretching fairly aggressively on the first set. Pulling as far as the dough will let me without tearing and rotating the bowl 90o and then repeating 3 more times. After 30 minutes I do set 2 of the stretch and folds. On this set I pull only until it covers the mass of the dough. 30 minutes later I do the 3rd set of stretch and folds. This time I only stretch about half way across the bulk of the dough.

When I finish the 3rd set of S & Fs I put my dough in a straight sided bowl where I can see the progress of the rise. You are shooting for a total increase in bulk of 30%. Then put the whole thing in the fridge for 24 hours. My fridge stays at 34oF and during that time the dough will have continued rising a bit and will be at roughly 50% increase.

Now is time to divide the dough into 2 equal size masses and do a preshape on the counter. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes and shape into boules or batards and put them into your bannetons. Then bag them up and back to the fridge for 24 more hours.2

I preheat my Dutch oven at 450 for 1 hour. Score the dough and load into the DO. I add 2 ice cubes to the pot3 then cover and bake for 22 minutes. Remove the top and continue to bake for 22 more minutes then take it out of the oven. Let fully cool and enjoy.

1 I know you know this but 1:3:3 in this case would be 33g starter, 99g flour and 99g water. That will give you plenty starter to get 180g and have enough to feed and continue your starter. I do this rather than build a levain because that is just fiddly.

2 I really like the Reynolds roasting bags in the “chicken” size. They are big enough for your banneton and last for a very long time. I have 3 that I’ve been using for over a year!

3 If you are not familiar with this trick, it is really cool. The ice cube does 2 things. First it lowers the temperature for just a little bit to prevent the crust from setting too soon and it also provides more humidity in the DO so that the outside of the loaf will gelatinize and make a cracker like crust.

Uses only 100% whole grain King Arthur whole wheat flour, water, and whole wheat sourdough starter. First rise can take 24 hours. After baking and resting, needs to be cut and used or frozen almost immediately, or it gets really hard and dense. Otherwise very nice.

Question - the inside feels sticky when freshly cut even though the digital temperature probe read the right temperature for it to be done. It's not raw dough, just sticky. Am I doing something wrong? Also, how can I make it fluffier, or will that require mixing in white flour?

With starter from Kensington Sourdough in Toronto, this is our first ever sourdough loaf. Been making yeast-risen bread for a while, but first foray into sourdough.

We went on a run, then swam in the ocean, then I gave this gift at the end!

My wife made homemade sourdough English muffins. They were stretchy and chewy and utterly amazing. I am ruined for grocery stores English muffins.

OK, just posting some old bake pictures to get this ball rolling!

Experiments with my current sourdough culture. Trying to find that sweet spot between flavour and effort.

I have screwed around with sourdough for years but always fall out of it because it’s a pain n the ass to maintain and cook.

So this time, I’m determined to make sourdough bend to my schedule, rather than rearrange my life around feeding the beast.

Recipe overview:

• Wallaby bakers flour (Australian brand).
• 72% hydration
• 10% starter
• 1.7% salt

Method:

• “no knead” (stretch’s and fold - ~20 minute intervals for ~2.5 hours)
• +4hr bulk ferment at 22°C
• +30hr (refrigerated) final rise in banneton.

Bake:

• Heavy bottom stainless pan (on parchment)
• Baked at 240°C-220°C (40 minutes total)
• 20 minutes @240°C covered by steel bowl
• Uncovered and baked for 10 minutes.
• Removed from pan (directly onto oven wire rack)
• Turned down to 220°C for 10 minutes

Rested:

• oven off, door cracked open and left to cool for an hour
• served after a 12 hour rest.

Review: Not bad. Great oven spring. Could have better acidity. Crispy crust but a bit too much “chew”. Nice, medium density, open crumb. Extremely low sugar (great for extra crispy toast with Vegemite and grilled cheese).