Practice Kitchen: Sourdough bread

The background of some of my research and learnings are over on the Overview page. Feel free to read there and then come back here... we'll wait... no really, go ahead and read it.

Welcome back! Today's experiment is taken mostly from Sourdough Bread from The Kitchn. I always want to give credit where credit is due. I didn't make this process up - I'm just documenting how I followed it and what I learned to hopefully make it easier for someone else.

Today... Today we bake bread! I'm so stinkin' excited!!

The ingredients and procedures for the Starter and Levain are on their respective pages. Here is the last list of ingredients and procedures for our Sourdough loaves.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon salt
525 grams water, divided
700 grams all-purpose flour or bread flour

Instructions (this is apt to get very lengthy):

Mise en place... well...kind of not necessary today. There is no "Mise" to "place"! :)
Test the levain... or don't. There are varying views on this. I didn't and mine was fine.
Dissolve the salt.

Mix the salt with 50g of room temperature water.
Stir to dissolve.
I only have kosher salt in the house and might consider keeping some fine sea salt around for baking. It will dissolve better.

Make the dough.

Mix the levain with 475g of water. Stir until mostly blended.
Add 700g flour and stir until the dough comes together, there are no more pockets of dry flour, and it resembles a shaggy lump.

Rest #1

Cover and let the dough rest for 30 minutes to 4 hours.
This is called the "autolyse". I still don't understand it fully, but we're letting the flour get hydrated without working it to death and building up too much gluten.

Mix in the salt water.

Pour in the salt water.
Get messy! Stick your hands into the goo and start squishing it all around. I found this was faster and more effective than trying to work in the salt water with a spatula or wooden spoon. And it was fun.

Stretch and Fold

Imagine your bowl is a clock. Grab the dough at 12 o'clock and stretch it upwards. I was using cheap plastic bowls and this was very tricky. The dough didn't want to stretch, it just dragged the bowl along with it. I ended up holding the bowl down with my elbows. Yeah - it was pretty funny. Should have had someone here to take pictures... anyway...
Once you have stretched it a bit, bring the part you have up in the air back down to the bowl and fold it over the dough so you've brought 12 down to 6. Does that make sense? It does to me, but I did it. And it is harder to explain than I expected... anyway...
Turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat. Do this all the way around the clock - so you've folded 12 to 6, 3 to 9, 6 to 12, and 9 to 3. I really hope that makes sense...
Repeat this process every 30 minutes for a total of 6 times. I did this at noon, 12:30, 1, 1:30, 2, 2:30. Make sense?
This series of photos is after each S&F. Blogger isn't liking when I add captions to these pictures so they're here in order 1 through 6.
The dough didn't change as much as I think it should have. I need to work on this process a bit more, I think.

Rest #2

After the last S&F, cover the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes to an hour.

Divide and pre-form (Rest #3)

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. I actually needed to gently knead in a little flour. My dough was really sticky. But in the end, I think it needed to be a bit sticky.
Split the dough into 2 equal-weight pieces. I used the kitchen scale again to make sure they were close. They need to be close or the same to bake at the same time and temp.
Gently form them into rounds.
Cover and rest for another 30 minutes.

Prepare the proofing bowls or baskets

Line 2 bowls or baskets with clean dishtowels. Do this... I didn't and I wish I had.
Dust them heavily with flour. No really. Go to town. This is going to save you later. Use plenty of flour.
Rub the flour into the bottom and sides. There should be a layer all around. Excess can always be brushed off later, but stuck dough will be stuck.

Shape the loaves and put into the proofing baskets

This is even harder to explain. I'm going to quote The Kitchn because I can't even begin to explain...
"Dust the top of one of the balls of dough with flour. Flip it over with a pastry scraper so that the floured side is against the board and the un-floured, sticky surface is up. Shape the loaf much like you folded the dough earlier: Grab the lip of the dough at the bottom, pull it gently up, then fold it over onto the center of the dough. Repeat with the right and left side of the dough. Repeat with the top of the dough, but once you've fold it downward, use your thumb to grab the bottom lip again and gently roll the dough right-side up. If it's not quite a round or doesn't seem taut to you, cup your palms around the dough and rotate it against the counter to shape it up. Repeat with the second ball of dough."
Transfer the formed rounds into the proofing baskets with the seam side UP. Yes, up. The bottom is exposed in this step so that when we invert the basket to remove the dough later the bottom is down.

Rest/Rise #4

Cover with plastic wrap and a tea towel and let rest 3-4 hours.
Alternately, you can put it in the refrigerator at this point and let it cold rise overnight (12-15 hours).

Preheat the oven and pans to 500°F

Don't cheat this step. The heat is very important in both the oven and pans. I know, you can often get away with other baking if the oven isn't quite to temp. Don't try it here. Give it plenty of time to preheat.

Transfer the loaves into the pans

USE PARCHMENT PAPER! Cut 2 fairly long strips of parchment paper. You'll use the long ends as handles to pull the bread free when done.
Invert the proofing basket/bowl over the parchment and let the dough gently fall onto the paper.
With a very sharp knife (or a bread lame), score the top to allow the bread to rise correctly. This is worth doing some additional research on...people get really creative with this!
Lift the parchment with the dough down into the preheated pans. Preheated pans. They're hot...watch your arms!
Cover the pans with their lids.
You'll notice here that mine are neither on parchment nor scored. The dough and I were fighting and tonight, the dough almost won. Trust me... use parchment.

Bake! Finally...

Bake at 500°F for 20 minutes.
Turn heat down to 450°F for 10 more minutes.
Remove the lids and cook at 450°F for 15-25 minutes until beautifully golden brown and they sound hollow when you thump them.
Use the sides of the parchment paper and a spatula or tongs to remove the bread from the pans.
Place on a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before slicing. Waiting is sooooo worth it. But it's almost impossible.
Grin like a goofball when you can hear your loaf crackle and sing as it cools. This seriously made me feel like a rockstar when it did this!