Baked Starter! | The Contemporary Loaf

You already know that bubbly, lacy look while you have a look at a well-fermented starter by way of the aspect of its container? I’ve typically puzzled if that construction may very well be captured by baking it, and what the outcome would style like. Now that I’ve acquired my new 4 X 4 X 4 Pullman pan (excuse me, “toast field”), I made a decision to strive it out.

My customary starter nowadays is 90% hydration, 2% salt, bread flour.  I refresh it simply earlier than mattress and it’ll sometimes be prepared to make use of round 10 – 12 hours later. Then it slowly goes downhill till the subsequent refresh. I take advantage of a translucent deli container for the starter. Within the morning I refreshed the starter 1:5:4.5 starter:flour:water, and within the late night I took 30g and refreshed it in the identical ratio, that means 150g of flour.  I took 5g of the remaining starter and refreshed it with the identical ratio, placing it again into the deli container.** The big portion I put into the buttered Pullman pan and coated it with the lid. This was proper at midnight.

** the container is getting a bit of gross with an excessive amount of dried out outdated starter.  It is nearly time to maneuver to a brand new one.

Utilizing this technique I might use the deli jar starter to gauge how developed the ferment was, very similar to an aliquot jar.

By 11 AM the subsequent morning the starter within the deli container was very bubbly and lacy and should have began to sink a bit. Within the Pullman the dough/starter had risen someplace between 2/3 and three/4 of the best way up.  Sadly, I did not assume to make a measurement. Time to bake!

I baked lid on at 400 deg F/204C for 35 minutes in my countertop oven.  By that point the loaf was baked however the high appeared pale and anemic because it had not risen as much as contact the lid.  In actual fact it hadn’t risen in any respect however appeared prefer it had sunk a bit, all the way down to about 2/3 of the pan top. I suppose the dough was overproofed, although it does not look sunken and the pores are nonetheless giant.  To get some extra coloration, I took the loaf out of the pan and baked it upright at 425 deg F for an additional 6 minutes.

Even with the subsidence it seems to be like these lacy bubbles did get baked in.  The crumb is clearly very full of enormous dimension holes. The crust is skinny and crispy with a very good taste. The crumb is a bit of comfortable and sponge-like and it has a stronger, barely buttery taste than white loaves often have.  I did not discover any tang, which shocked me.

 I suppose you possibly can name this a 100% preformated flour loaf. Or you possibly can say it is the final word porridge loaf. It illustrates how versatile the usage of a loaf pan might be (particularly a Pullman pan). Dough too moist and sticky to form?  Scrape it proper into the buttered pan. Let it bulk ferment till nicely alongside then bake. Dough stiff?  After bulk ferment, form right into a log or a number of balls, then place into the pan.  Or something in between.  It is laborious to overlook. They’re all good. 

TomP