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Hello everyone.  I am new here, hope this is ok for a topic.  I have not seen this addressed on the pages I have looked at.

I have been baking bread for a while, but am branching out into sourdough.

I have started my first sourdough starter (not from scratch...tried that before and I think we have too much mold in our house for it).

 Anyway, got the sourdough starter going, made some bread.  Tasted fine, but both the round loaf and the loaf in the loaf pan had one HUGE bubble under the crust the entire length and breadth of each loaf..... I could have hidden a chihuahua in there lol.  The crust was obviously fairly strong, but I was puzzled by the one HUGE bubble.  Any ideas?

If anyone is interested, my sourdough is actually a commercial starter that they sell up here (for tourists lol).  BUT I have been pleased so far.  After the "secret compartment bread", I made another loaf using some of the tips I found here for increasing the sour of the sourdough....the resulting loaf was VERY good, VERY tender, nicely crisp crust.  It almost had a sour taste--you could tell that it wanted to be a "real" sourdough, but just couldn't quite make it.  However, the more it cooled, the more tang it had.

I am eager to do more, now that I can see that the code CAN be cracked :).  Thank you for your time and for this forum--it really helps!

I baked a loaf of Struan, following Peter Reinhart's recipe and I have to agree with what he said in his book Brother Juniper's Bread Book, "Struan became the mainstay of our bakery, and I still think it is the most beautiful and delicious bread I have ever made or tasted."

This multigrain bread is simply delightful, from the first to the last bite!

Noy

PS: There's a 2nd loaf that's almost proofed and ready for baking in the next few minutes! Gotta go!

I finally made Thom Leonard's French Country bread. Great flavor, crumb was OK..I had a ? about how to shape a "tight boule, without deflating", but I'll work that out. My problem is that whenever I bake 2 loaves I don't have the room to fit them both on the stone at the same time. The first one has a great crust, spring and color. The 2nd one looks anemic. I reheat the oven to 500, refill my pan of water with 1/4" of hot water, the vent has steam pouring out and voila..blah. I'm just wondering what the difference is..the stone has been in the oven for the preheat and bake of the 1st loaf, I bring the temp back up , re-establish the steam..any ideas? This happens any time I bake 2 loaves one at a time.