The Sourdough Experiments: The First Loaves and Hiatus

I did so many wrong things with this effort, and it shows. But then, the first loaves always have that little bit of fail to them.

My mistake: Pausing at the wrong point of the instructional video and committing to that before finding out the true steps.

People... if you're making an instructional video, put the advice for noobs FIRST. Don't make a 5-minute huge deal out of proportions YOU DON'T EVEN USE. Gah.

So I was supposed to add 700 grams of water to one kilo [1000g] of bread flour, but the dude made a huge deal out of 800 grams of water. As a direct result, my dough was WET AS HELL.

I gave the heck up on it after most of a day. I had smooth dough, but it was floppy and whatnot. I just wanted a LOAF.

Another mistake is that my oven doesn't go up to 290 degrees Celsius. Other than that, most things went... eh.

Twenty minutes at the highest temperature I had [270 celsius] still had my first loaf as dough, so I left it in for another half hour and... the top pic is how it looked after the fam had their way with it.

I left the other half of the dough overnight on the table because I couldn't be arsed and...

I was shocked how it grew. Alas, it was still very liquid :P

I thought I'd over-floured my proofing baskets. I was wrong. You need a solid layer on that noise. Like... more than you'd think reasonable solid. Then a handful more. I had to delicately encourage the dough to let go of the fabric so I'd not have a torn dough... lump.

I gave it half an hour at 270 celsius and it looked nearly perfect. If I didn't mind the net height being like an inch. So I gave it a little bit more than half an hour 'cause I couldn't hear the timer beep and...

Just a wee bit more burned than I wanted. Don't listen to music and bake at the same time, folks.

The crust is weapons grade. The entire family agrees.

This does not, in fact, stop any of them from getting this bread.

The crust may be weapons grade, but the interior is nice and soft and tasty, so... yay?

There's a definite zesty tang to the bread, and the baking I did probably won't last until Monday, but I'm counting the edibility as a win.

1. It is not a "sod" - aka, a dense, doughy, stodgy mess
2. It might take some chewing, but it is edible
3. I am pretty sure I know what I did wrong.

The bad news is: Thanks to the entire Covid-19 panic purchasing of everyone else on the planet but me, there is NO FLOUR ANYWHERE. Like... I understand that making sourdough uses almost criminal amounts of flour, but cripes, folks. You don't need to buy out the entire damn store. Yikes.

It's two weeks, maybe a month. Settle down.

Anyway, I'll be focussing primarily on keeping my starters alive until I get more actual flour for this noise. Progress update when and if sanity is restored.

I can at least post a couple of family fave recipes until then.