Bread Number 100: Adapted River Cottage Sourdough

Self-awareness is a good quality and never more so than when realizing that a professional male baker's hands doing 10 minutes of kneading is not the equivalent of 10 minutes of kneading by a woman who needs a device or a strong man to open every jar. I have various tricks when it comes to opening jars, but my hands are never enough.

My failure to either almost never adequately knead or to have the patience to adequately knead is why I love stretch and folds, which offer great results without the time, effort, and anxiety of kneading.

Significant Adaptations

The first time I made the River Cottage Bread Handbook Sourdough Bread, I kneaded and the resulting bread prompted my husband to say that it was the worst bread in a long time; damning statement that it was decidedly mediocre. [Read bread book reviews. The River Cottage Bread Book is listed under Advanced to Way Beyond Me.] On the second try, I did stretch and folds; the bread was much better than the first, but still way far off from the favorites.

When I switched to stretch and folds instead of kneading, I also decided to get rid of the guidance to do a once-an-hour degas to the dough.

Pretty Straightforward Ingredients and Instructions 

Sponge

120g starter
272g water
250g bread flour

Mix, cover, and let sit overnight and beyond for 14 hours in a cool, but not cold, kitchen.

Dough

300g turkey red whole wheat flour, which is almost white
12g salt

Mix and cover.

Four stretch and folds, each 15 minutes apart. Could easily do stretch and folds up to 30 minutes apart.

Let rise for five and two-thirds hours.

Prep and Baking

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

I shaped the dough into an oblong shape. Cover for one hour while the oven heats. I also preheated the top of an obling la cloche on a baking stone, but one can easily use loaf pans instead for similar results with a slightly different shape.

Baking

• 10 minutes at 500 degrees.
• Instructions say to decrease according to color of the dough at 10 minutes. Mine was still pale, so I only decreased the oven temperature to 400 degrees. I baked for another 26 minutes and it could have been a couple less.

And ...

Good bread with a nice oven spring. Nice taste, but nothing amazing. Can do an easier recipe with results that are as good or better.

The bread appears white even though I used about 50 percent whole wheat, probably because the fine turkey red flour is incredibly whitish despite being whole grain.