San Francisco Sourdough revisited…again and …again!
Yep, it’s what we all seem to go back to “The perfect loaf like San Francisco’s Sourdough”. I have been doing a series of long cool ferments following hints and suggestion that I have found on the internet having to do with Boudin bakery. My first attempt is a shorter attempt (about 26 hours ferment) at SF Sourdough. MY second attempt will be around the 48 hour mark. For my first attempt I followed this formula:
FIRST ATTEMPT:
In a mixer mix:
- 39.90 oz of vigorous 166% starter (you really have to use a long proofing starter like San Francisco Starter, the other shorter proofing starters will not work with these long fermented doughs)
- 20.1 oz water
- 1.5 oz oil
- 1.5 oz salt
- 56.5 oz bread flour
This makes about 7.5 lbs of dough at 63% hydration. I started mixing at 11:30 am. I let the dough ferment in a large container overnight at 50 degrees (if you have an extra fridge turn it up until you register 50 degrees, or see if a cold room or enclosed porch in your house registers 46 - 50 degrees. This formula won’t work well at the lower temperatures of the refrigerator (<40). Next morning 8 - 9 am take out the dough and shape it and let it set and ferment at the 50 degree temp for around 4 - 5 hours. Bring in the dough and let it warm up to room temperature and watch the dough to see when it is ready to bake. Turn out dough onto hot baking stone, slash and spray it once well with water, cover the dough with a preheated roasting lid. Bake in a well preheated 450 degree oven for 15 minutes, and then take off the lid (careful, hot steam), then turn the oven down to 425 degrees and bake 15 minutes more. Done and done! Turn your oven back up and put the roasting lid back in to heat. I got some wonderful results. However, the sour was only moderate. Here are some pictures of the loaves:
NEXT ATTEMT:
Next I attempted the longer fermentation and pushed it to the edge. I almost overdid it. When you ferment a sourdough too long, the sugars in the dough are used up and not available for the Maillard reaction which is what turns the outside crust so deliciously brown. The crust can turn out porcelain and whitish. For this attempt I somewhat followed the former recipe but I made a preferment (motherdough) :
- 18 oz San Francisco Starter at 166%
- 10 oz water
- 27 oz bread flour
This made up a preferment dough at just shy of 63% hydration and weighing 3 lbs 7 oz. I started this dough at noon and put it into a container at 50 degrees F. I left it at that temperature overnight.
Next day at noon I mixed in my mixer:
- 18 oz water
- 1.0 oz oil
- 1.2 oz sea salt
- 28.3 oz bread flour
I mixed this just until incorporated (2- 3 minutes)and then let it autolyse for 20 minutes. After autolysis, I added torn off chunks of the preferment from the day before and added it to the dough in the mixer. I then mixed on low until the doughs were well mixed together ( 1 - 2 minutes). I put the dough back into the large container and let it set at 50 degrees until the next morning (oops this is where I made my mistake) I had written in my formula to take the dough out at around 4:00 pm that same day and shape it and put the loaves back into the 50 degree temps but I totally spaced out and let the dough sit another night. So knowing I was on the edge, I went ahead and took the dough in the morning and shaped loaves, the dough was so so very bubbly that I had a bit of a time shaping. The stickiness of the dough told me that the dough had gone too far, so I was hoping that I didn’t totally lose it. I put the dough into a 90 degree environment inside of plastic bags that I had spritzed inside with some water to keep the humidity high. (try your dishwasher’s heat cycle for a few minutes to warm it up and place grates on top of the dish holders, then turn off the dishwasher and close the door) I checked on the warmth of the dishwasher with a thermometer to make sure it stayed at around 90 degrees. I couldn’t use my oven for warming the loaves because I knew I didn’t have much time until the dough was ready to bake and I needed to preheat the oven. The dough was in the warm dishwasher for and hour and I had to take it out and set it out at room temperature because it was raising too fast. Anyway, in two hours I was baking my first loaf. The first loaf was on the pale side so I cranked the oven up more for the next loaf - 475 F. I baked the same way as with the dough mentioned prior but had the oven at 475 and turned it down to 450 after the first 15 minutes to get it to brown better. I knew from this that the dough was right on the edge. That means I will have to adjust my timing and or add some diastatic malt to the dough during second mix, or more importantly, adjust the percentage of preferment I put into the dough, which was, believe it or not, 88.6 % of the total dough! (What was I thinking?) If I cut down on the amounts of preferment, there is more food available for the remaining yeasts and bacteria as the ratio of fresh dough to old dough is higher. I think a combination of all three things would help this dough to be perfect. The resulting dough was 63 % hydration and weighed 6 lbs 4 oz (some weight is always lost in the bowls and scrapers etc). Anyway, this bread had a shattery crip crust and was very sour. The crust was not shiny though and had few fermentation blisters. Here are some pictures of these loaves:
The sour of this bread is so sour it is like a plain sour yogurt! It is actually too sour. I think the first bake produced a superior looking loaf and if I can just get the second batch’s sour flavor, it would be just about perfect !
I believe that a long cool fermentation with a warming up period at the end of the proof is what is wanted in this wonderful challenging sourdough - San Francisco.
I will be changing my timetable and working with the preferment dough to see if I can’t get a really great techniqe that will work everytime. Have fun baking… I know I do !
