One Night Sourdough…it's great!
I really like One Night Sourdough. I have written about it before and I probably will again, it is a versatile recipe that fills in when you forgot or couldn’t get a batch going in the afternoon for the evening’s shaping and refrigerating overnight. I actually run into that often enough. This time I ran into two problems. I couldn’t mix up the afternoon batch, so I made up the sponge that night for the One Night Sour. It did really well and came out bubbly next morning:
Next morning I got up early as I had to run an errand that day. So I finished up the mixing and got the bulk ferment going and took off on what I thought was my only errand. I made it back and was able to shape my loaves but had to go back out so I put the loaves into the refrigerator. I was out all afternoon. When I got back I took out the loaves one by one and finished proofing them. Then I baked that evening. The dough did really well being cooled down the extra time and as a matter of fact had a better tanginess and full bodied flavor.
I wanted to exeriment on the last loaf to see how the slashes did if you spritzed just the slashes with water before baking. I wondered if having the slashes filled with water would keep them moist enough so that they would do some great expansion. What I got surprised me. The slashes came out with the ghostly white crust like I had mentioned before in other blog entries, and it was just in the slashes!
Well I have to admit that made me wonder about the elusive ghost crust. I know it can happen with dough that has been fermented too long. But it shows up sometimes on only one loaf or on loaves that have not been long fermented. I am certainly wondering if spraying too much water directly on the dough might cause enough cooling of the dough to get a “ghost” crust. I will have to do an experiment and douse the dough with water to see what happens. I have to figure out the ghost crust in one way or another!
Anyway the ghost crust loaf was cut up and used for sandwiches before I got any good pics. I was able to get a picture of the three loaves but as it was nighttime, the pics didn’t turn out too good. As you can see the loaf on the right with the ghost slashes, also spread more than the other two:
I got some nicer pics the next day when the sun came out of the first two loaves.
The bread was very nice with a sour tang and a soft yet elastic crumb. That is cracked wheat you see in the crumb. I cut it up for dinner the day after it was baked and served it spread with garlic, parsley butter alongside shrimp pasta, yummmmmmy!