It’s been a long, long process

1000 g Caputo Nuvola

700 g water

22 g salt

200 g sourdough starter

Maizena, for dusting

Okay, so I leave the starter out overnight after feeding it. Morning, it’s ready to go, rip roaring.

Then autolyse 1000 grams of Caputo Nuvola with 700 grams of water. This time I added the salt straight into that mix. So 22 grams of salt, because I like it a little bit salty. Leave that to autolyse for 20 minutes.

Then add 200 grams sourdough starter. Leave that to fermentolyse for 30 minutes.

Then do first sort of, first stretch and fold, mix it all together. And then 30 minutes after that, I take a little cutting for my aliquot jar, mark the time. And then 45 minutes later, I do a really, really long coil fold. So I really stretch it out, like as far as it goes. It’s like one of those candy makers who just stretches it out. It probably gets to like a meter and a half. And then I wrap it around, make a roll out of it, and put it back into a ball.

And then 35 minutes later, I do the same thing again. And then 45 minutes after that, I do a lamination. I spread it as thin as I can, as big as my worktop goes, laminate it, always making sure to keep the dough nice and ball shaped in the bowl.

And then I let it sit and wait until a 75% rise in the aliquot jar. I always use the same glass bowl, so I know how much the rise is supposed to be and how it looks in the bottom.

Tip it out, divide it up, basic, basic pre shape. Then let it rest for 20 minutes, nice, bubbly, jiggly, puffy, cloudy. And then I do the shape into a banneton, which is a loaf banneton. Basically degas a little bit, fold up for like a letter fold, I think it’s called. Fold up, fold down, turn 90 degrees, and then roll it up, press the ends, sometimes fix the seam. Put it into a banneton dusted with liberal amounts of maizena. Cold retard overnight.

Next day, whenever I feel like it and have a moment, I preheat the oven to about 260 degrees Celsius for an hour with my pizza stone. Then I have the baking tray over that, upside down, another baking tray underneath that with water so it creates steam. Open it up, score my loaves down the middle because I like it symmetrical more than I like the ear. And because this is all practical, like family needs to eat this bread, and if it’s too bunny shaped, then whatever, family’s not happy.

Then in the oven for 30 minutes at 240, steamy, steamy. Then take away all the steamy ingredients, like the top tray and the bottom watery tray. Take the parchment paper off from between the bread and the pizza stone, and then let it crisp, usually only for like 15 minutes. Because we tend to toast our breads afterwards, so the crust doesn’t need to be too crusty. And I have kids, so kids don’t want crust, they get less crust.

Anyway, that’s that. I don’t have anyone else who really appreciates bread, so I’m not sharing it here. Just because I’m excited that it’s finally like, it’s like my 10th loaf in a row, like 5th. That’s probably like 12 loaves that I’ve done that have come out to more or less this quality, but it just keeps improving.

I’m just really happy.