Yesterday I was watching a YouTube video of June and she was making her sourdough bread so I thought trying what she did could be good.
June is one of the test cooks at Delish. They have a website and YouTube channel. June is my favourite and I watch everything she puts up.
Then I saw that she had done a video called, How To Make Perfect Sourdough Bread At Home (Starter Included!) | By June. I watched it and realised that there might be something that I wasn’t doing.
My bread
Over time with my bread I’ve noticed that while it looks okay and tastes great, it always seemed flatter than I thought it should be. It looks great as I’m doing it, and even when I carefully place it in the Dutch Oven it looks fine. Then when I lift the lid it has gone side ways and not a lot of lift up the top. If I do an oval loaf it looks more round when it comes out.
So as I was watching June she was talking about building the structure of the bread. I guess in normal bread that is done by kneading. However, in sourdough, it is done with stretching and folding. I just did the basic, without thinking too much about it.
Then June starting talking about how you need to do quite a bit when you first put all the ingredients together. You have to do a lot. Damn, not what I had been doing.
Trying to follow June’s sourdough bread
I thought it might be fun to do what she did. Again, I rushed in without looking too close or even thinking.
June’s recipe was for an 85% hydration loaf. If you have ever made sourdough you will know that is a lot of water and a very wet dough. I just couldn’t get it to behave as she did. I tried.
So much depends on the flour you use and for me, it was a disaster. I stuffed it up a couple of times. Considered throwing it out, but in the end, decided to persevere. I baked it this morning and it was a bit flat, but it did rise more than I thought it would.
Today’s loaf
This morning I decided to take what I had learned from June about creating the structure of the bread and making a loaf with the recipe I normally use. It won’t be baked until tomorrow, but I already can see how different it is. So fingers crossed I get lots more height in my bread and not so much girth. Wish me luck.
Leanne, thank you for sharing this incredible you tube of June, I watched it all to the end. It’s really interesting her technique and I learned some of it, but it appeared to me somehow very time consuming. Up to my a few year old experience of baking sourdough bread, I am following the recipes of the book of Emilie Raffa ” Artisan Sourdough Made Simple” , and I always get amazing results in making my breads. It’s like my bread baking “bible”. It takes some time of experience how your sourdough works, to have a really satisfying result it took me some two years.
I take baking bread like the impermanence of life, ” you follow the flow of the dough”
Wish you happy baking, my friend.
You’re welcome Cornelia. I follow Emilia’s recipe too, but I still do a lot of the stuff that June did as well. I was shown by someone else to do the same thing.
Thank you Cornelia, happy baking.
Wow! What a lot of work. You have great perseverance! It will be interesting how it turns out tomorrow.
It looks like a lot of work, but really it is a couple of minutes here and another couple there. You just need to remember to do it. lol. If you put all the time together it is probably only about an hour, but spread over two days. The bread is worth it though. I love it. It did turn out a lot better, the one I was making. Thank you Lena.