I thought I'd write about my latest adventure with San Francisco
Sourdough.

Yesterday about 1PM I mixed a couple of tablespoons of SF starter with
enough flour and water to make 250g sponge, and let it sit at room temp,
upper 70'sF.

At 9PM, I mixed it with 850g bread flour and 250g rye flour, a heaping
TBSP salt, and half a tsp of vitamin C powder, and 650g water. I kneaded
the dough 5 minutes, let it sit for an hour covered, stretched and folded
a couple of times, let it sit half an hour, and formed it into two logs
which I laid in my holey anodized aluminum baguette form. Without
covering it, I set the whole thing atop a cookie sheet, and set that atop
two cereal bowls in the bottom of my big styrofoam cooler ($6 at Wal-
Mart) into which cooler I had just poured a quart of water I'd microwaved
for 5 minutes. I let it sit overnight, covered in the tepid humidity of
the cooler.

Note that this is a radical departure from Ed Bechtel's wise
recommendations of putting a couple of trays of ice cubes in the cooler.
I just wanted to see how the dough would fare in the warmer climate.

I arose at 7:30 this morning, opened the cooler, and saw the loaves had
grown so big and top-heavy that they'd slumped over onto the cookie
sheet.

Quickly, I turned on the oven to 400ºF, set the cookie sheet on my stove,
and gently lifed the slumped portion of the dough to plop it back on top
of the portions of the loaves still in the form. Then, I slid the cookie
sheet into the oven.

After an hour, I lowered the temp to 375ºF. After another half hour of
baking, I removed the nicely browned loaves from the oven, let them cool
a bit, then started prying them out of the baguette form. With only
slight difficulty, I managed to work them loose without destroying them.
The tops were convoluted from the reconstruction I'd done, and strangely,
there was some evidence of oven spring, albeit not much.

Maria got up around 9, made some coffee, and started urging me to give
her some hot buttered bread. Eager to comply, I sawed off a 5-inch
chunk, sawed it into thick slices, buttered them, and handed four of
them on a plate to my bride. She promptly went into bread heaven.

The crust is crispy, the innards moist and large crumbed, and the taste
nicely sourish as SF bread should be, bolstered by the sumptuous aroma of
the added rye and hints of carraway.

I had expected a large rise to the bread, but not quite as large as I
received. I should have made the logs smaller - it would have been
better to make two baguette logs and boule out of the dough. Then I
would not have had to deal with the slump.

Nevertheless, the experiment was an adventure that led to success. The
bread is excellent, and I learned a new technique.

It is not necessary to leave the loaves in a cool cooler overnight
because then in the morning I still must let it sit out for two or three
hours to warm up and finish rising before I bake. By putting the loaves
in a tepid cooler (or, rather, a warmer), I get an excellent rise that is
ready for baking within 8 hours.

Also, I discovered that it is not necessary to make a SF sourdough sponge
using the tripling method. Going from starter to sponge in one 8-hour
phase produces a worthy sponge that properly innoculates 4 to 5 times its
weight in flour.

And I learned that 20% to 25% rye is an excellent proportion to add to
bread flour in order to turn out a hearty, delicious hybrid loaf.

Onto my one slice of bread (I'm about to go sample some more) I spread
some of my home-made Peach-Jalapeño Jam (see the recipe at
http://bobhurt.blogspot.com).

Bob Hurt


P.S. For those who are interested, I made the "ñ" chacter by holding
down the Alt key, tapping 1, 6, and 4 on the number pad, then releasing
the Alt key. Alt-165 makes Ñ, and Alt-167 makes º. B.H.

On Tue, 05 Jul 2005 15:47:54 GMT, Bob Hurt
wrote:

and half a tsp of vitamin C powder

Howdy,

I would think that you have produced an "ascorbic acid
bread."

I'm not knocking it, if you're happy, I'm happy, but the
amounts of vitamin C that are typically added are perhaps a
thousandth of your proportion (and it is often already in
commercially milled flour.)

All the best,
--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

"Bob Hurt" wrote:

the experiment was an adventure that led to success. The=20
bread is excellent ...

Could you possibly post photos?

By putting the loaves in a tepid cooler (or, rather, a warmer),=20
I get an excellent rise that is ready for baking within 8 hours.

Have you tried room-temperature rises? They go even faster.
Bakeries frequently do the rises even warmer, ~ 85 - 90 degrees.

I learned that 20% to 25% rye is an excellent proportion to add to=20
bread flour in order to turn out a hearty, delicious hybrid loaf.

Why is that excellent? Do you know that the gluten-poor rye lowers
the effective gluten proportion in the dough, leading inevitably to
a compromised rise?


--=20
Dick Adams
firstname dot lastname at bigfoot dot com
___________________
Sourdough FAQ guide at=20
http://www.nyx.net/~dgreenw/sourdoughfaqs.html