Makes one loaf or two “medium” pizzas: 450 flour, 300 water, 10g salt, 50g starter.
Cup conversions: Roughly 3.5 cups of flour, 1.25 cup water
Note: this is Grant Bakes with half as much starter or Culinary Exploration with rounding
Note on timing: It is possible to mix and bake in the same day with 5 hour bulk ferment and two hours rest if you mix the dough early enough.
The every day, no discard approach for starter that piqued my interest is linked here and I liked it because there is no wasted flour maintaining your starter. It uses the scrapings method, using only the scrapings of starter from the jar. In the video Phillip (Culinary Exploration) credits the Bake with Jack channel for the approach.
Not baking bread on a daily basis? Then pop the jar in the fridge until the next time you are ready to bake. A week is not problem and need some testing for longer periods.
Can you start with a small amount of starter and and go back to a bigger starter? Yes. Phillip took 5g and added to 1 liter jar and 250g water and 250g of flour. Gave it a quick mix, lid on and 24 hours later had a really active starter.
The main point from Philip, “If you have a good strong starter we don’t need crazy feeding schedules or to waste lots of flour to keep these starters maintained.”
I decided to use this scrapings method, along with the all-purpose-flour-specific recipe here (specifically the 65% hydration one at the bottom) to start my sourdough baking.
Big fan of the scrapings method described above. Keep a small jar in the fridge with only the scrapings. The night before you make bread feed your starter with only what you need for the next day. This process means no discarding required. Keep “empty” jar in the fridge for a week. You can build back a “normal” larger starter if needed no problem.
Since you are not doing the typical 1/3, 1/3, a 1/3 method, the starter will take longer to become active. This means leaving it overnight versus 3-6 hours. A tradeoff that requires a more planning but worth it.
The Grant Bakes channel experimented with making bread with only 1 gram of active starter and the other extreme as well and the bread came out fine.
Note: In October 2022 a couple months after starting the baking journey with the scrapings method I ended up with a week starter that wasn’t rising. I think what happened is I just didn’t leave enough starter in the jar. But you could do is take all of the starter out of the jar including the scrapings and then make sure you have at least 10 grams, ideally 20 or 25 grams. The bake with Jack channel use the 20 to 25 g worth of scraping’s and added 75 g of water 75 g of flour and removed 150 g.
What I did to fix the dormant starter was just give it more time to activate. I started using 100 g of dough in my recipe instead of 50, And I just think the typical 10 to 12 hours wasn’t cutting it. 11/1/22 I fed starter 4:00 p.m. and mix the dough at 7:15 a.m. the next day and it was much better. I came home at 1:00 a.m. and it was almost doubled in size.
Doesn’t matter really. I like water, salt, starter, flour.
Culinary Exploration: Dissolve salt in water, then 1/3 of the flour then starter then the rest of the flour
Bake with jack: Starter, Water, Flour, Salt (Chops starter with bowl scraper).
Mix flour and water and let sit before adding the starter. Helps the gluten develop. Optional step. I skip.
This process starts when you add the starter to the water and the flour. So from the time the dough is mixed up until the pre-shape. The dough should expand by 75% to double over this time. Get some bubbles, get some rounded top, some puff, some wiggle. Could be 5-7 hours depending on the kitchen temperature.
Folding over the center in the bowl is hard to beat for the sake of simplicity. Be more careful with each stretch and fold to maintain the air/CO2 that is building up.
Culinary Exploration: On bench create a big square then fold in thirds and roll. After initial mix did a turn over and knead. Then 3 stretch and folds.
Bake with Jack: On Bench with the help of spray bottle of water. Counted off fifteen stretch and folds at the first fold. Then shape.
Grant Bakes: In Bowl
You want to be gentle with the dough to keep the air inside that has developed. This air creates some bigger webbing in the crumb. If you are making a loaf to be sandwich bread you make actually want to be less gentle to have a tighter crumb.
Starts after the shape.
For a while I would put the shape directly into the fridge uncovered for the cold proof but I think others keep it out at room temperature for an hour or two before going in the fridge. If after 4 to 6 hours of bulk for mening and appreciate it still doesn’t look that lively I’m going to leave it out for 2 hours before putting in the fridge.
Culinary Exploration puts in fridge for 2.5 hours then does a 30-minute flash freeze and then puts in the fridge overnight. (Note: originally confused here because he’s actually not using a fridge but a climate-controlled box to maintain a normal room temperature of 77 degrees since his kitchen is often very warm or cold.)
Grant Bakes puts the dough directly in the fridge uncovered immediately after the shape so not one right answer.
Surface blisters on a sourdough crust are the result of a long, cold ferment. Blisters form when C02 slowly leak into the surface of the dough during the cold retard. The longer the dough stays in the fridge, generally the more pronounced your blisters will be.
Preheat the oven for at least 30 minutes (Grant Bakes) and preferably an hour (others).
Score the dough. This gives air an escape hatch and helps the ear develop. I feel like I got some cracking on the bottom a few times which I took as a sign of not scoring deep enough. So now I do a plus sign and make sure plenty deep because I haven’t seen the problem with scoring too deep but I’ve definitely seen the problem of not scoring deep enough.
Bake from cold.
Culinary Exploration used 430F for 20 minutes covered with pot then 25 minutes uncovered.
Bake with Jack did 15 minutes on 450 degrees then 20 minutes on 375 degrees.
I’ve seen 500F as well (Grant Bakes 20 minutes covered in dutch oven then 15 minutes uncovered).
Some people use a dutch oven. I like using parchment paper onto a pizza stone. I add a cup of hot water to a cast iron. This steam helps prevent the crust from hardening too soon.
Oven spring happens in the first part of baking. The remaining baking time is about caramelizing crust and giving it a crunch.
Letting the bread rest for an hour is something others do but I often cannot wait that long and warm bread just out of the oven is delicious. Waiting definitely allows the bread to settle and is better if you’re cutting the entire loaf at one time.
If dough is too sticky through the process then lower hydration the next time
If dough is too stiff then increase the hydration next time.
A bit of confusion on the baker’s percentages. It seems culinary exploration counts the flour and water in the starter as towards the baker’s percentages. Seems like there is not one answer.
12/15/22: tried something different and fed the starter at 9:30 a.m. knowing I had work later that night. I didn’t end up getting home until midnight. At that point the starter was more than ready nice and bubbly and I mixed the dough around midnight. After eating some food I did a stretch and fold and then after getting ready for bed I did another stretch and fault. The dough definitely seems like it wasn’t mixed well enough and this is likely due to me mixing in a dark kitchen. Definitely could have used A better mix of the dough and a third stretch and fault. So I woke up in the morning at 6: 30am, And I did appreciate but 7:00 a.m. and preheat the oven. I did a final shape at 7:30 and put directly in the oven. I was on the fence here about doing a flash freeze But decided not to. Of course the dough is warm score wasn’t so deep.
10/28/22: I set the oven at 4:50 and put it in the oven pretty much as soon as the oven was preheated I also noticed at the time that I didn’t have the cast iron pan in the oven and so at this point I put it in with a cup of water but it didn’t have the normal effect. A couple things so the crust obviously came out differently and at first glance maybe a lot harder although it looked lighter. The other thing is I got some cracking on the bottom which tells me that the score isn’t deep enough. I’m not sure what the issue would be with a score that is too deep so I feel like I should try that next time cuz I’ve definitely run into the score not being deep enough more often.
I didn’t get a ton of rise and I put the banneton in the fridge at 4:00pm after mixing the dough at 8:30 so it had about 7.5 hours to bulk ferment. The starter had doubled but I don’t think it was as active as I would have liked it to have been.
9/23/22: Fed the starter with 50g of flour and water the night before. Pretty early this time around 5:30/6:00pm. The next morning the jam jar was totally full and not busting out of the lid but a very active starter. Going for a doubled recipe today. Planning on putting a loaf of bread and two pizzas in the oven today, to save on oven cost. The dough was mixed by 7:30am, completing my first stretch and fold at 8:15am 2nd at 8:45am and 3rd at 9:30am. 1:30pm hit 6 hours bulk fermentation so split and pre-shape for loaf and start proof for pizza dough. Tougher to score the room temp dough. Wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out. Baked at 500 for 20 and then 430 for 20.
9/16/22: The night before I tried out my new “bonne mama” jam jar when feeding the starter and the wider top makes it much easier to use. I used “Grant Bake’s” recipe with 50g of starter instead of 100g. I also doubled the recipe to make two pizza for dinner that same day.
The mixing of the dough was completed at 9:20am. I did three stretch and folds although not strict to the 30-minute timing (9:56a, 10:46a, 11:43a). After 5 hours of bulk fermentation I did the dough split and loaf pre-shape (2:20pm) and then the final shape (3:00pm).
The pizza dough rested at room temp for an addition two hours before baking. The first pizza went in the oven at 4:22pm, 7 hours after mixing the dough. I made a white and green-chili/pineapple (cutting 3 pineapple rings was a perfect amount) and they came out banging. Did a 4/5-minute pre-cheese and toppings bake at 500 degrees followed by another 5 minutes to desired doneness.
The bread dough had a good amount of tension but in the basket it was coming a part a bit, even after pinching. The dough had an overnight cold proof with no flash freeze and was not baked first thing in the morning. I preheated the oven at 500 for over and hour and then popped in the scored loaf for 20 minutes before doing a 180 degree turn and turning oven temp down to 430 degrees for an additional 15 minutes. The result looked fantastic, a tiny ear but plenty of oven rise, good shape, color and blistering. The inside was baked but could’ve benefited from more time. The distribution of holes were were denser on bottom and larger on the top (sign of under-proofing). The types of holes were bigger than in the previous loaves. Some minor tunneling. Not as spongy or gummy, but still fits the under-proofed criteria.
Could only wait 20 minutes until cracking into this thing. The bread was delicious.
Next time I think I will go 430 for 20 minutes, rotate, and then an additional 25 minutes regardless of what it looks like.
9/7/22: It’s been 8/9 days since the starter has been fed so at 8:00am in the morning I decided to feed the starter with a 15g of water 15g of flour to see how it would grow all day thinking I would then discard this 30g to have a more active starter to then re-feed that night and original and make bread tomorrow. Instead I ended up used this starter to make pizza dough. this dough was split into thirds. I cooked two of those dough balls, not the next day, but two day’s later. I cooked the third one like a week later and it still came out fine.
You can keep pizza dough in the fridge covered for a few days no problem.
8/30/22: Previous night, at 9:50pm, added 50g water and 50g flour. I used 100 grams of starter to make a double recipe of dough.
I baked the first loaf later that same day after a 2-hour room temperature proof followed by 30-minute flash freeze. Baked at 450 degrees for 25 minutes Lowered temp to 400 for another 15. Rotated 180 degrees.
The next morning at 10am I baked the second loaf. Again 20 minutes at 450 degrees then 15 minutes at 400 degrees 10:39 after a turn. Got a bit of cracking on the bottom which is why I got a popped bottom. This may have to do with the leaf cut score and/or it not being deep enough. Good oven spring. Good blistering. Good crumb, not be. Crumb a little dense at the bottom. Little gummy. But I am getting very close.
The first loaf was good enough in that you can definitely make bread the same day if you feed the starter the night before.
8/23/22
9:25pm: I fed the scrapings jar 25 grams water and 25 grams flour.
9:15am: Took 10 minutes to mix the dough and did not mix the starter into other ingredients very well. Tried the stretch and fold in the bowl. Dough didn’t feel like it rose much. Did a pre-shape and felt good about the shape/pre-shape. The dough never got very air-y during the entire process but after the shape the boule looked normal.
4:24pm: started cold proof uncovered on middle shelf
7:00pm: 30-minute flash freeze
8:10am: Dough out of fridge was a little stiff. Cracked a bit on push. Went with a deeper score this time. Started bake at 450F for 25-minutes. I then lowered the temperature to 400F and kept in for another 15 minutes. I did turn the bread 180 degrees.
Overall: The loaf came out fantastic. Better oven spring. Much better rise. A bit of an ear. More symmetrical. Still some splitting on the bottom. Actually a bit of splitting all the way down the one side. Definitely needed the full time and I feel like next time mind as well add on another five minutes. Not sure if the better results are from the pre-shape or the extra oven temp but I will do both the next time around. Curious about maybe trying the 70% hydration recipe the next time around. May consider using the Grant Bakes recipe as well, (70% hydration, recipe here) as it is very similar to culinary explorations just with round numbers and twice as much active starter (100g versus 50g and still will fit in jam jar).
8/19/22:
Used the Culinary Exploration All Purpose Recipe 65% Hydration
9pm previous night added 5g of wife’s existing starter to a jam jar. Added 50 grams of water and 50g of flour. 455.10g flour, 287.4 water, 9 grams salt.
Note: I did not use a mix of whole wheat and white, just all-purpose white
Cup Conversions: Roughly 3.5 cups of flour, 1 tsp of salt, 1 cup water, 1/4 cup starter
No Pre-Shape. In hindsight I think this may have been a mistake.
Day 3: 9:05am Bake: I took it out after 30-minutes and the dough was not fully cooked. So after letting it rest for 20/30-minutes I had to put it back in the oven. Rookie mistake.
Overall: It was a success in that it was edible. Didn’t get a lot of rise in the oven. The loaf was a little lopsided. The crust had a bunch of little bubbles. The bottom crust cracked a little bit. I don’t think the dough had enough strength. I was little timid with the dough at first and there was no pre-shape.
Found this “How to Read a Sourdough Crumb” video here (by Sourdough Journey) to be very helpful.
Bowl weighs 1567g
Current jam jar is 190/192 grams without lid, depending on where it is on the scale?
Old jam jar is 226 grams without lid