Sourdough Achieved!

It took many years and several attempts but I finally can make good sourdough consistently. That’s a big deal as so many failures on this road. What did it? Patrick Ryan. One of my main complaints about sourdough is having to touch this wet dough over and over again over hours. Pull and fold. Slap and fold. Different methods that always ended up with dough all over my hands. Well Mr. Ryan kneads it. He kneads by hand. I used his recipe and use my KitchenAid Stand mixer. This video changed it all. I also realized that I wasn’t letting my starter really get active enough. Another video helped me realize that. The first loaf in the slideshow above is my first success. After a few of those successful loaves I moved on to baguettes. The Perfect Loaf recipe by Maurizio worked the very first time. Patrick Ryan’s technique helped me modify Muarizio’s recipe so that I didn’t have to constantly be touching the dough. I just leave the dough in the mixer and at the intervals I’m supposed to stretch and fold I just run the mixer for a couple minutes. It worked out great. I recently tried a very wet no knead recipe. It is fine, but 100% white flour makes it kind of boring. I also didn’t achieve the big holes that the recipe supposedly gives from it’s high hydration. I’m not sure how much more I’ll pursue the large hole. Butter just drips down through them anyway. So now I’m working on converting my Miso-Rye recipe to 100% sourdough. The last trial loaf was terrific and very light. The lightest sourdough loaf yet.  Pictured below. Thanks to Elizabeth Morris of the Bread Baking Babes for encouraging me to give sourdough another try.