Pardon me for a rather long introductory e-mail, but I want to
sufficiently describe a recent sourdough attempt using Carl's starter
and Mike's san francisco sourdough recipe (http://
www.sourdoughhome.com/sfsd1.html).

I received Carl's starter about a week ago and began culturing/feeding
it. Yesterday, it was ready, bubbling away in a glass Ball jar with
about 2-3 cups of active starter in it, which I had been feeding 2-3
times a day.

First some notes on the starter:
1. I found that the starter would at least double in size, but it
would do so within 1-2 hours of feeding and then settle back down to a
much smaller size.
2. My starter is probably on the liquid side, like a wettish pancake
batter.

On to the recipe:

When deciding to make my first bread, I followed Mike's instructions
and started adding flour to an initial amount of water. Until I
reached a 1:1 flour/water ratio (by volume) I used the whisking
attachment, which was a trick I read about on a website to help
incorporate enough oxygen into the dough. It has worked well on my
usual simple loaf with white flour, olive oil, and flax seeds. After
that, I switched to the dough hook. (The technique I am describing is
discussed he http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=157)

I found that I needed to add about a cup EXTRA of flour to get
something anywhere near the consistency of dough rather than batter.
I kept it as sticky as possible in terms of hydration, and was able to
very carefully remove a kindof "gloppy" dough from the mixer and form
it into a round on a baking stone. The kneading process took about 20
minutes.

After about two hours, the dough looked like it had completed rising.
It was also a bit overly flat. I'd say maybe 3 inches tall and 12-14
inches in diameter. The top was also crusty and dry, which I didn't
particularly like.

I decided to lightly re-knead the dough (about 5 folds and quarter-
turns), cut in half, and place into two loaf pans. I also sprayed the
tops with oil and covered them with a cloth. After about 6 hours, I
had no appreciable rise.

I decided to wait it out another 16 hours and when I came back to it,
the loaves had doubled in size but were flat at the top and had dried
out like before. They smelled like good sourdough, though, so I
decided it was time to bake them and see what happened.

After 425F for 55 minutes, the loaves came out passable in flavor and
maybe a little bit crumbly for my taste. The flavor was excellent but
the texture, shape, and density of the loaf was off. There was a hole
at the top where presumably the collapse occured but the dry surface
retained some of its shape. It was still a bit moist and chewy
inside, which was a bit of a surprise. It might be slightly
undercooked because the middle is still a bit on the moist side. This
bread would make really good croutons, I think.

--

If you've read all of that, here are my questions. I've read the FAQ,
so some of them I have answers to, but am not so sure about:

Q: I think my yeast is too fast. Is there a way to slow it down,
while allowing the bacteria to grow for the nice sourness I am looking
for?
A: I think my starter has a ton of yeast in it and is super-active. I
think I should cut the yeast down to 1/8c or even less of starter.

Q: How can I keep my loaf from drying out during the extended rise?
A: Spray with oil? Cellophane maybe? Add some olive oil to the
recipe? Not sure on this one.

Q: How can I keep my dough from being a flat mess and keep its shape?
A: The only thing I can think here is I need to add more flour, which
is called the classic beginner's mistake. So I'm open to other
suggestions here. Also, maybe my kneading "technique" is off. I'd
like to use the machine for kneading, because I am really at a loss of
how to handle such a wet dough without adding a bunch of flour via my
hands and the kneading surface just to keep it manageable.

Thank you for your time!

Also, have people moved off Usenet onto somewhere else that I should
know about? rec.food.* seems to have finally been overcome a bit by
spammers. Sad. For a rather long time, it was a pretty good haven
fomr it, but they seem to have finally found us.

--
Steve
Rhay dEot MsteOve aVt gEmaiCl dAot PcomS