Gosh it's been too long since I posted any blog entries.
Anyone who's seen my recent posts scattered throughout the forums will know I've been having difficulties with maintaining shape in my sourdough attempts as well as getting too much sour flavour (yes there really is such a thing...at least for my tastes! :) )
Today, a breakthrough came in the form of a 100% (no sifting) whole wheat miche - it was less sour than recent attempts, still wonderfully nutty and flavourful and retained excellent shape throughout (with plenty of oven spring as a bonus). It came out pretty much exactly as I planned it. I'm really pleased, of course, and must give a lot of thanks to Eric and Bill - your tireless theorizing, testing and experimentation were invaluable.
More important than the delicious bread which I'm currently enjoying with slivers of Gjetost (mmmm brown norwegian yumminess!) - was what I learnt about my starter (Bubbles...yes I went ahead and christened my starter!). I'm still organising and assimilating all the information in my mind but much has to do with the feeding cycle - something I already had suspicions about before. Also learned a lot about how to apply a different strategy to whole wheat bread - using more starter/intermediate build in the final dough to get a milder result.
Well, that's all for now. More stuffing my face to follow....
