So, this is my first time using natural yeast to make bread from this book. I read a lot of his background notes that he wrote about making the starter, or the “levain” (French). I am really struggling with his quantities because he effectively makes a kilo of starter every time he refreshes it and while this might be good in a bakery. It’s crazy to do this at home so I think there are some fundamental flaws or waste with his methods. But, I stuck with it for this loaf and I will see how it turns out. It is also interesting that he uses a little bit of baker’s yeast for the first set of recipes, which apparently gives it a little bit more rise, air and a lighter, crispy crust.
I have bought a new vessel for checking how much starters and doughs are rising. It is a bit big for the starter part of the process so I have ordered a smaller one that I will use. I am also going to try this on the next loaf for the main rise to again see clearly how much it is growing.
As I have a student staying with us at the moment, I involved him in some of the breadmaking. We mixed up the starter using a dough stirrer and then left it until it doubled in size in the new tub. Then we mixed up the rest of the flour and water in my normal mixing bowl and left it to autolyse for about an hour while we went to Costco to get, among other things, more flour!
We then mixed up the final dough. In his book he says to measure out some water into a bowl on the scales, and then put the starter in this to weigh it, having zeroed it after the water goes in. This seemed a bit weird, but when we just tried to spoon out the starter it was really painful. So it was indeed much easier to just grab a handful and stick it in the water and then pull bits out to get to the right weight. He says to only use 360g … but we have at least 1 kg, so there was a lot of starter left over, more than half which is really weird, I might check his website out and ask him why. Surely we shouldn’t just put it in the bin, as to remake the starter you don’t need much, in fact just a scraping.
Then it was pretty much business as usual, although I shaped it twice before the loaves went in the banneton to try to give them a bit more strength.
As for baking them, he doesn’t score the loaves with a gignette, but relies on the natural weaknesses on the underside of the loaf to cause it to split. So the first loaf only split a bit, and so I scored the 2nd one. I also only “browned” it in the oven for 7 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes of the first one. He recommends 15-20 which would have the loaves as black as soot by the time they came out.
So pretty tasty bread despite using a little less salt than he does. The holes are a bit big and to be honest I still prefer my own tried and tested method. But, I am learning from it so that is good!
