Pics of my first day vet loaf with white supermarket flour vs this last one with organic stone ground flour. Same recipe and method.
This is my 5th loaf and by far my BEST and it all came down to the flour.
I usually feed my starter with organic stone ground flour and bake with supermarket bread flour. My loaves have been fine but I have never been able to get an ear no matter how I deep or angled I score the bread. I also hadn’t experimented with hydration because I’m a noob and didn’t really know what that meant until I googled why my dough was coming out like a flat blob out of the banneton after cold proofing.
I read recently that using organic stone ground flour in the bake gives it a better flavour but is denser so hard to handle for beginners. I wanted to give it a go anyway and stupidly decided to also decrease hydration to 65% at the same time. WELL thanks to the low hydration it certainly was hard to handle and quite dense in the end BUT the thing had exploded and turned into one big EAR. This wasn’t good news for my loaf but great news for my next one. I went back upto 75% hydration and changed only the flour.
SO today I’ve baked my loaf with
100g starter
375g water
500g organic stone ground flour
10g salt
She’s PERFECT. The flour wants to erupt. I did a TINY score this time and this is what happened. It’s obviously a bit denser with a smaller crumb but that’s to be expected. She tastes divine.
Guys I implore you to try a better quality stone ground flour and see what happens. I don’t measure to the exact gram or time my bulk fermentation or cold proofing. This loaf was actually a rush job and I wasn’t expecting these results so you really could be doing everything right and your ingredients are letting you down. Especially if you’re using American supermarket flour unfortunately. My other tip is REALLY stretch the dough with the stretch and folds. When I’m on my 3rd/4th and it’s gotten really tough set I literally pick it up and shake it haha.
I only ever use this recipe but changed the flour obviously
https://alexandracooks.com/2017/10/24/artisan-sourdough-made-simple-sourdough-bread-demystified-a-beginners-guide-to-sourdough-baking/
by KiwifruitOliveOil
10 Comments
Amazing!!
Excellent loaf! The next step? Get a flour mill…
Awesome work friend! It’s so fun when you get great results. I wanted to share my experience regarding flour choice. Whole grain and whole wheat flours will usually be able to handle more hydration, meaning the dough is still easy to handle and retains strength throughout the process. What probably happened here is due to both the stronger flour you used and you reducing the hydration to 65%. And it’s so great that you’re already using your baker’s intuition to increase the hydration next time around for the same recipe. Once you find the sweet spot for a given flour mixture it becomes much easier to get great results. This is true even with plain old store bought all purpose flour! Check out some other flours as well – some of my faves are spelt, semolina, any hard red/winter wheat you can find, and sometimes even rye or einkorn. If you can find locally grown or milled flours, even better. The flavors can be unreal in some of these flours, and they all have their own baking properties. Happy baking!
Both loaves are beautiful. Which one is supposed to be which? The ear on the one in the first 3 pics is insane, frankly
Beautiful loaf! What is that dutch oven youre baking in?
It’s not a secret – It’s your primary ingredient.
If you’re using a bleached, devoid-of-nutrient cheap shop flour, then unsurprisingly you wont get a good result.
The real secret is finding a basic flour that isn’t some organic stone ground artisanal $20 per kg – more thab likely going full baker and getting a 25-50kg bag from a mill that works out about 50-60c a kg, that will perform just as well as anything else. Some people even buy grain and mill their own.
Join us at r/HomeMilledFlour! A few rabbit holes to explore:
* [Home-milled flour 101](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeMilledFlour/comments/1jntlcr/comment/mkmqxdl/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
* [Mockmill 200 Pro](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeMilledFlour/comments/1apwtz2/comment/kqb3ggp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
* [Home milling resources](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeMilledFlour/comments/1hy7kec/comment/m6gk686/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
* [Milling corn](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeMilledFlour/comments/1f6va65/comment/ll9erg1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
* [Things you can mill](https://www.reddit.com/r/kaidomac/comments/183i48i/mockmill_what_can_you_mill/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1)
* [Milling system intro](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeMilledFlour/comments/1gp2ny1/comment/lwnhux6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
>I only ever use this recipe but changed the flour obviously
I use her pineapple juice starter method with freshly-milled flour, it’s great!
* [https://alexandracooks.com/2023/09/10/how-to-build-a-sourdough-starter-from-scratch/](https://alexandracooks.com/2023/09/10/how-to-build-a-sourdough-starter-from-scratch/)
Congratulations!! They both look amazing (and I never realized how impressed I’d be at someone else’s loafs!)! I use King Arthur’s bread flour and have been quite pleased. I’m not familiar with hydration stuff and what that has to do with anything, but just like this whole sourdough journey, I’ll Tik Tok my way thru it and learn! 😊
Hi. Very well done now it will only get better.
Happy baking