Super San Francisco Sourdough!!

I took my San Francisco Starter out of the refrigerator a few days ago and have been refreshing it to bring it back up to vigour. Yesterday afternoon, I mixed up a new recipe for Super San Francisco Sourdough.

This is such a nice starter, it proofed wonderfully in four hours.

  I made enough for two large loaves of just over 2lbs each. I also made the dough a lower hydration than I usually work with. The dough felt wonderful, bubbly, alive and smelled great. Here are the two dough boules:

The flecks in the dough are cracked wheat. I waited five minutes and rounded up the boules by using a twisting motion with my two hands and slight pressure. Here is what a twisted boule looked like after you put it in it’s basket:

I refrigerated these boules overnight and for many hours the next day. I didn’t bake them until about 12:30 pm. I wanted a very long cool proofing. Then it took only  1 -1/2 hours to warm them up and get them proofed enough to bake. Here is one of them slashed and ready to bake:

The bread came out absolutely wonderful! Here is the first loaf:

Here is the second loaf:

Both loaves:

Here is a closeup of the blistered crust:

Here are some crumb pictures:

The bread was still slightly warm so I couldn’t tell how sour it was, as the sour comes on after it has completely cooled and set. It was already mildly tangy though. The crust is terrific and I would say it was a very successful baking day!