Finally Success with Dan’s White Sourdough

Dan Lepard’s recipe in his Handmade Loaf book page 28, is a very wet mixture which will give more holes in your sourdough, a good thing, but for traditional breadmakers like me it’s a nightmare working with such wet dough.  My previous attempts have all pretty much ended up with tasty but flat loaves, good for making a focaccia shape but not if you’re wanting a deeper shape.  In previous experience I haven’t followed Dan’s method in the book so I kinda deserve what I got really, but his loaves take all day with the resting and folding.  I also found the handling of such wet dough extremely difficult to control.

Today after lots of thinking, discussions, reading about the sourdough Queen experience  Gill, I decided to do the folding very briefly, using a little oil to keep the wet dough in control and rest it, I did this three times, but it didn’t hold my day back.  I did it whenever I was around throughout the day, didn’t keep the eye on the time but trusted the look of the dough had risen enough.  I let the final rise happen in a bowl lined with a floured teatowel, with the intent to gently turn it on to the baking sheet ready for baking.  Unfortunately this didn’t quite work as planned because some of the sticky dough stuck to the towel and instead of just peeling it off the dough it had stripped and stretched the dough distorting the shape, so an emergency shaping operation had to take place very quickly.

I can’t emphasise enough how extremely pleased I am to finally make Dan’s loaf in the shape it’s suppose to be.  I will post step-by-step photos after the wedding.  And talking of wedding this will be my last sourdough until then too.  I shall carry on making the semi sourdough for the family and normal dried yeast for middle daughter as I can resist those but I can’t resist the sourdough…so until the dress is back in a suitcase permanently this girl is not touching sourdough.