Australian Sourdough Super Tasty!

I mixed up a batch of sourdough using my Australian Sourdough Starter. This starter is my husband’s very favorite flavored starter besides the motherdough breads. I decided to use the Two Night Super Sour recipe but make it a one night instead. Well I ended up changing the flour in the recipe too.

In the evening:

• I started with 2 cups of vigorous Australian Starter at 166% hydration (one cup flour to one cup water).
• 2 cups of warm water
• 1 cup Rye flour
• 1 cup Whole Wheat flour
• 2 cups Bread flour

I mixed this together as a sponge and let it set at room temperature overnight.

Next morning I added the prefermented mixture to my mixer and then added:

• 1 cup warm water
• 2 Tablespoons Oil
• 5 teaspoons salt
• 5 cups Bread flour (approximately)

I mixed the ingredients together and then let the dough rest for 15 minutes. I then kneaded the dough for an additional three minutes. The dough was doubled in 6 hours. I then had my daughter shape the loaves because I was very busy working on my car. I came back in to check on how she had done and realized something I had not considered before. I took it for granted that she knew how to shape loaves. She didn’t. She had basically gotten them into shape enough to put into the bannetons. The dough was flat in the baskets. Almost like it had been poured in. So I took out the dough and showed her how to shape the loaves so that the loaves had an outer skin of dough pulled around the outside and pinched together to form like a casing so that the bread could raise itself up and not turn out flat. If you don’t know how to do this, get some good books on baking which will show you. Jefferey Hamelman’s book on bread comes to mind, he has some great illustrations showing how to shape loaves.

Anyway, the loaves were reshaped and placed in banneton baskets:

The shaped loaves raised for two hours and then slashed and baked:

The loaves were two large loaves weighing over two lbs each. They came out great!

Here is the first one:

Here is the crumb for the first loaf:

Here is the second loaf:

This dough was easy to handle and not too sticky. The crust texture and color came out really great. The crumb is soft and open, and the flavor, as always, is unspeakably delicious. Australian Sourdough starter has an old world flavor that is hard to describe. It is also nicely sour.