New to Me Sourdough Method

There are plenty (like everyone!) of folks who know more about sourdough bread making than I do but I’ve always wondered why you feed the starter, let it rise and then fall and then fall and that’s when you use it. Normally, I will feed my starter the night before when I’m going to make bread the next day. I can see on the sides of the jar how far it rose and then, it fell.

In my head, it would make more sense to feed it, immediately weigh out what you need, add the flour, or at least part of the flour for the recipe you’re going to make, add honey or any sweetener, and let the starter have a feast! Then, after an hour or so, add the rest of the flour, the salt and any other ingredients and proceed as usual.

A few days ago, I was reading and someone said they did exactly what I had been thinking and made a wonderful sandwich bread. It still had a nice, crispy crust but the texture of the bread was more like sandwich bread.

I tried it and may never go back to making regular sourdough bread. Basically, the lady said she takes starter right out of the fridge, and so long as it’s been fed within the last week, it’s good to use. I just poured the amount of starter into the bowl, added the flour, stirred it all up, let it sit for a while, added the other ingredients and proceeded as normal.

Since Vince is on a low carb diet (and Judy should be on a low carb diet) and, since it’s soup and sandwich season, I wanted sandwich bread that I can use for sandwiches. The recipe I was using would have made one large-ish loaf of bread. I knew making two loaves would make small loaves so I figured a small sandwich is better than a large sandwich, right?

Close to perfect sandwich bread. No large holes, small enough that it won’t totally blow Vince’s diet, especially if we don’t have sandwiches very often.

The loaf the white bread is propped up against is a cinnamon swirl bread. Instead of making two plain bread recipes, I figured I could make the cinnamon swirl and use that for cinnamon toast for my breakfast.

I thought I did a better job of distributing the cinnamon/sugar mix but maybe not. I’m hoping as I get farther into the loaf, it will look better but, if not, it will be better next time.

The crust is still crunchy but the center is soft and very sandwich bread like. The lady who posted about this said she puts the bread in a cold oven. Most of the sourdough (maybe all) that I’ve made has been put into a 475 or 500 degree oven for a few minutes and that gives it what they call “oven spring” which is a fast, high rise and that’s what helps make the large holes in the sourdough. This loaf was put into a cold oven that I turned on when I put the pan in the oven and I think that’s what gave it the texture without the big holes, though I can see holes, it still made a good sandwich loaf.