I love what Mike G is doing. This is a very good place to start. I’m a sourdough geek so always trying out different methods. I’ve lost count of the number of methods I’ve tried.
Years ago I had an
oven that you could program to come on at a certain time and temperature. I would make dough during the day, put it in a dutch oven and the oven and set the time and temp for the following morning. This was great in the winter, I’d come down in the morning to fresh bread and a warm kitchen.
The most reliable recipe / method I’ve found and one I frequently return to is
Tartine Country Bread.
The first time I came across it was in their book, “Tartine Bread”. I read it and it’s a whole 44 page chapter! I never made it, it sounded way to complicated. Then I was listening to an adventure podcast about a surfer, who happened to be the photographer for the book. He talked with such passion about the recipe, I felt I had to try it. I started from scratch when I moved to the US and followed the recipe to the letter. I thought I knew everything there was to know about making sourdough, but this was like a masterclass and my understanding grew. The chapter includes the stories behind people using this recipe for the first time. The author really wanted this method to be fool proof for beginners and also produce awesome bread. I now have a single card with all the key steps on it. Sometimes I’d get over confident and think I know all the steps, and then regret it. I have tweaked some of the ratios because it turns out not all
water / starter / flour is the same. Water can be soft or hard, chlorinated or filtered, rainwater or bottled. Flour has different levels of protein, different levels of absorption. It’s worth taking notes / pictures and finding what works for you.
Anyhoo, Sourdough is so much fun. I’m fortunate to have a very forgiving family and we all laugh when one of my experiments produces a “Duck Killer”
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