Another bread This weekend!  This time it was the poolish baguette.  I decided to try using my sourdough to create the poolish.  I have never done this before and usually use dry yeast for this bread, however, my starter needed to be used and I thought I would give it a try.  I adjusted the moisture of the poolish to accommodate the water content of the 100 g of starter I used.  To determine the moisture level of my starter, I microwaved 10g on high for 5 minutes and then reweighed it.  In hind sight the 100 g was too much, but more on that below.

The poolish (a 100% hydration yeast flour and water mix) was fermented over night.  The next morning, I mixed all the ingredients to form a loose sticky dough.  This dough seemed much wetter than I remembered and was very sticky and hard to work with.  After two folds, the loaves were formed and couched for proofing.
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When they were ready, they were baked at 500 F for 30 minutes.

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Because the dough was so loose, the loaves slumped a bit during the bake.  I think now that the excess starter in the poolish may have caused it to over develop, a condition where enzymes increase in the dough, destroying the gluten  and preventing a tighter structure.  Lesson learned.  I would like to attempt this again with less starter and perhaps a longer kneading time to maximize gluten development.

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I was happy with the crumb and texture, however.  The bread had good taste and was delicious with dinner :-)

 
It was a busy weekend.  While the bagels were baked inside, I was able to fire up the wood fired oven again after some down time due to construction.  This called for an old standby for me, Hamelman's Pain au Levain, a sourdough white bread.
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My sourdough mother was boosted in an over night fermentation to create a stiff biga starter (a low hydration dough).  Approximately 8 oz was used for this bread.  The oven was fired and the bread baked at about 500 F.  I also have some baguettes in this picture.

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I was pleased with the results.  I had good oven spring and well developed "ears" on the slashes.  The crumb was open with a soft texture.  It's made a great sandwich bread this week!

 
These pages will follow my progress in a baking challenge to bake the breads in Jeffery Hamelman's "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes".  More on the challenge here.