Reduced my hydration & my loaves improved so much!

I’ve been making sourdough for over a year now. I can make a perfectly decent loaf that tastes good and has a good texture, but I was struggling with them coming out a bit flat and being a bit inconsistent in whether they’d turn out good or just fine. Perfectly good to eat but not necessarily stunners. I’d been using a 75% hydration recipe. I decided to experiment with reducing my water a little and the last 3 loaves I’ve made have been my 3 best yet! Here’s a video of the ✨ crunch ✨ but I’ll put some pics in the comments!

Recipe:

100 g active starter

325 g warm filtered water

500 g bread flour

12 g salt

Mix starter with water until well combined. Add flour, salt, and mix until shaggy ball. Cover with a towel and leave for 30-45 minutes. Do a set of stretch and folds- for this one, I stretch and fold the dough something like 12-16 times in one set. Then 3 sets of coil folds every 30-45 minutes. This guy bulk fermented for a total of 12ish hours! Cool kitchen, probably 65-67 degrees or so.

Preshape and let rest for 20-30 minutes, then a final shape. This time, I sprinkled rice flour all over a damp tea towel and used a loaf pan as my banneton. Let it cold ferment 10 hours. Preheated my bread oven at 450 for 30 minutes, baked 30 min covered and 20 uncovered. Temp checked to make sure it was >205 and let it rest at least an hour before cutting.