I followed the Bredtopia No Knead instructions to the letter and I know that the dough was meant to be wet, but mine was a big soggy mass, there was no way that I could shape it into a ball as it just oozed all over the place. I had to scrape it back into the bowl and add lots more flour just to keep it from escaping. I baked it in a Le Pentole saucepan with a lid which is the nearest bit of kit I have to the mysteriously named 'Dutch Oven'. The bread looked fantastic and smelled lovely and sour, but when I poked around inside a big crack on the top I found to my dismay that the inside was not cooked, so I vandalised the loaf a bit by tearing off some of the crust and bunging it back in the oven for another 15 mins. It didn't work......the crust is lovely, shiny, crusty and sour but the inside is a damp mess. There seem to be some bubbles but bleargh.
I don't know how to alter what I did - perhaps my starter was too runny, perhaps making the starter in a hot and humid heatwave wasn't the most sensible thing to do, perhaps mixing one person's starter instructions with another's cooking instructions wasn't a good plan......
So I suppose I'll feed my starter again tonight and start the process again and bake on Monday or Tuesday. This time I'll follow Dan Steven's recipe as I've made the starter his way but I think that I'll cook it in the pot even if I knead it, as I like the contained shape and the perfect round. I like the shiny super crispy top and if it rises more next time it should be lovely.
The experiment continues.
Watch this space for Sourdough 5.
cooking is an art, hang in there , you will get the magic combo and have perfect bread ; )
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