I’m a struggling baker but clutched out a win for Thanksgiving!

(Forgot to take a crumb shot of the panettone loaf so had to take one of a not as attractive leftover slice 😒)

Feedback welcome!

I’ve been baking for about three years or so and have really struggled with getting consistent results despite occasionally getting some wins. Really focused for my Thanksgiving breads this year though and it paid off! Decided to bring along some sourdough for dinner and panettone (kind of) for dessert.

Basically, nothing ever works in my kitchen the same way it does in other people’s apparently. Fermentation isn’t an issue at least, my starter is strong, but building strength in dough is hard for me. Kneading just doesn’t work for me the way it seems to effortlessly for everyone else. No matter how dry the dough, it sticks like hell to my table, and the more I knead it, the looser, more tear-prone, and incoherent my dough becomes. My stand mixer also absolutely never kneads the dough into a ball. It just mixes the puddle until it becomes even more liquidy, seemingly becoming a sticky teary over mixed mess before it actually comes together at any point. I’ve settled on mostly doing stretch and folds and autolysing because… idk kneading magically just doesn’t work in my kitchen no matter how closely I follow instructions.

But anyway,

Sourdough:
(Made three loaves, sent two with friends)
1200g KA bread flour
300g KA whole wheat
200g starter fed with dark rye
30g salt
1230g water
(84ish percent hydration, starter was over well 100% hydration)

Autolyse for one hour
Incorporate starter and salt
Four stretch and folds 30 minutes apart
(I pretty much laminate each time, stretching out the dough to cover my circular table then I move about the table in a circle, grabbing the edge of the dough and folding it toward the center of the circle until it’s all in a neat ball. Idk, I just have better luck not ripping the dough and stretching it evenly this way)

Bulk ferment at ~70 f for 6 hours (including fold time)
Split in three, pre shape with 20 minute bench rest followed by final shaping.
Placed in bannetons and cold fermented for ~40 hours.

Preheated Dutch oven at 500 for 1 hr
Added 2 ice cubes with bread
Baked lid on at 475 for 30, lid off at 425 for 18

Panettone
Baked in bread tins because I didn’t have pannetore wrappers and I’m very poor. Used the linked recipe as a base but doubled it to make two loaves. Also swapped candied citrus peel for dried mango because I happened to have some. Decided to shape one loaf in a bread tin by cutting pieces of a rolled log of panettone and placing them on top of each other, and the other one I just rolled into a spiral and placed directly into the tin.

Couldn’t complete the step of cooling the bread hung upside down since I can’t put a skewer through a bread tin, but it ended up as a brioche with nice mix ins basically! The family loved it.

But yeah, overall just wanted to say that even if you feel like you’re banging your head against the wall with baking bread and are failing to get consistent results after years of practice, know that you’re still a valid baker and your successes are worth celebrating! I have learning difficulties and feel quite discouraged when I make bad loaves after putting my all into them, but it was all about finding a specific method and slowly building intuition for the feel of dough at various stages of fermentation to see some success. Still got a long way to go, but here’s to all my fellow struggle bus bakers who just can’t stop because they love bread too much!