That makes it prime time to keep on baking. I've come to realize that baking good sourdough bread is going to be like learning Tai Chi. You learn it by doing it day after day, month after month. After a while you begin to get a feel for what's right, and you keep on making it, day after day.
This is my fifth batch, most of them have been edible, the best tasting one got left developing in the fridge for way longer than it was supposed to before being baked. I think I will keep that part of the technique. The latest one was really wet and floppy as dough, coming out of the oven it looks good but is still too hot to cut.
One thing I didn't expect was that it would take so much advance planning. It seems one should feed the starter 12 hours before one starts the dough, then there is making the dough, letting it sit for 4 or 5 hours, cutting and shaping the loaves, more rising, 12 hours of sitting in the fridge, 3 hours of warming up before just 30 minutes of baking. The first time I tried to do everything exactly right and I ended up setting an alarm clock and getting up in the middle of the night to shape the loaves, dozing on the couch for an hour and then putting the loaves in the fridge before going back to bed. Jeeze Louise! Well, I'm learning to think two days ahead, and doing something with bread every day and every evening. I have loaves at all stages now. I'm also getting a bit more casual about the timing. If something has to be done at a time that is not the time called for in the recipe, it just becomes a learning experience.
The best so far has been the dog biscuits I made with some extra starter, the recipe was out of the La Brea Bread Book. They're really just thick, dry, sourdough crackers and I can't stop eating them, I love the crunchiness. Oh, and the dogs love them too. It seems the sourdough smells real tasty to them, Chester keeps pointing his nose at the place where the starter is kept on the counter.
As I've said before, I am working with Nancy Silverman's La Brea Bread book. It makes great reading and will tell you everything you need to know, but it's pretty hard to cook from. She recommends that one learn to make a country loaf first, and the recipe takes up 16 pages! After wading through all of that information looking for the actual directions I took a pencil and underlined what I needed, typed it off and printed the one page recipe for my own use. The other recipes are not quite as bad, but one still has to look for the directions amid all of the info. I'm hoping another good bread book will come my way one of these days.
My friend let me borrow the Tassajara bread book, a classic from hippie times. I will be making my first loaf from it tomorrow. Their technique for working with the starter is different so I'm looking forward to seeing if it makes any difference.
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