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Finally sprung
In Sourdough

Finally sprung


I’ve been baking bread since pre-pandemic but during covid I ramped things up, got a 50# bag of Cairnspring Mills Expresso Bread Flour and started cranking out loaves.

Flash forward 6 years and I now work for Cairnspring as creative producer and get access to purge bags of flour so I’ve been diving deep into perfecting my sourdough. I’m back on the Expresso T85 which I think provides the most beautiful color crust.

All Cairnspring
850g Expresso T-85
200g Expresso Whole Grain
150g Rye Whole Grain
75% hydration
20% levain
2% salt

9:00AM – levain build 40:100:100 (good amount of whole grain here)
~2:00PM – Autolyse
2:50PM – Mix in KitchenAid for 10 min
4 sets of stretch and folds
6:00PM – preshape
6:20PM – final shape
Straight into fridge
~16 hour cold retard

Preheat 500° for an hour
Lower temp to 450°, baked on a 3/8” baking steel with pizza stone above, cast iron with boiling water in the bottom for 20 min. Remove steam, baked until burnished ~35 min.

by Legitimate_Spinach_9

11 Comments

  2. CodeNameBill

    Beautiful loaf and great story! I’m trying to grt my kitchenaid to be more useful for bread.

    I assume you’re adding the levain at 2 pm for 4 and a half hour total bulk? Dough temp around 78?

  4. eezyE4free

    Do you intentionally do the scoring perpendicular to the shaping/forming?

  6. Sushicue

    And I’ve never had anything but all-purpose flour in my kitchen until April of this year. Enter, Sourdough….I was even late to that party!! I think I’m ’fancy’ with organic, rye, whole wheat,l and even bread flour ~ can’t wait to get those specialty flours under my baking belt.
    Your bread is just fabulous! Thanks for sharing!

  7. Budget-Gene-317

    Amazing. That color is insanely beautiful! I’m tempted to try this flour.

  8. Kugeldog

    Beautiful loaf! Beautiful crumb! I call this “Perfect”