No picture porn but Ive turned Daves dough recipe into a sourdough bread with good results.
First and foremost not all sourdoughs are highly sour but the style is still sourdough. That's what I've made. For truly sour sourdough I have a starter I've been feeding for 1 1/2 years in the Finnish sourdough tradition. It's had everything fed to it from grapes to sour milk to flours (bread, standard, organic rye, quinoa, millet and Ethiopian flours). It has true grog floaty liquid layer on top and all the good sour smells.
No, Daves recipe an technique modification makes a sourdough without a much sour at all. Good for pommy wives an others just getting introduced to sourdough (wait until I spring the real starter on her!)
Daves modified sour gives a batter bubbly and a finished bread fresh from the oven like a crumpet you want to smother butter all over.
Process:
Make Daves starter. Weight is estimated 950g of starter. Put in bowl and put cling film
over to prevent drying and leave for 3 weeks in the fridge.
Next take it out and make the bread dough but I used all the starter and subtracted 300g from the added bread flour in Daves recipe. I mix the ingredients in Daves recipe in a bowl and added the dry and wet on top of the starter and mixed it in. Dig in the mixing spoon into the starter and stretch it apart to break it up and mix in to a dry batter or wet dough consistency. You can break the starter with your hands of you want to get messy but I wasn't in the mood so just spoon stretched and broke it up. When fully encorporated I gave the mix a good stirring with the spoon on full power (all sorts of muscles will ache).
Then I recovered the bowl in plastic wrap and set it aside in a 25C box to rise. Sourdough styles take a lot longer to rise. Mine was close to 5 hours to reactivate, rise and get to a bubbly dry batter consistency. Then punch down with another stirring and then onto baking trays or I'd you only have tins then tins it is (1/4 full will make non yeast risen loaf style or 1/2 will rise to the top.) Then back in the box to double.
Baking modification. To bake start with a cold non-preheated oven. Bread onto lower trays of electric or upper trays if gas. Start the oven on 180C and bake for 45 minutes. If tins take out the loaves 15 or more minutes before end of bake and put back on the racks without tins. Tap test if that's all you got for done ness. You won't burn at this temperatur easily and you should have a nice golden brown. Time will also depend on loaf shape and loaf size so adjust and take notes accordingly.
Slices to a thin crisp crust, and a uniform slightly moist crumpetnlike interior. The salt in the recipe and dribbling with butter will make you want to reach for honey and have a full experience right away. Neighbours love them and giving some awayakes for nice Neighbours.
Cheers,
Brewer Pete
