Attempted my first open bake today
I was a bit clumsy adding the water into my bottom rack for steam and I think that affected my oven spring resulting in the lack of burst at the score site. Also I baked on my pizza stone and realized the reason my pizzas and now this loaf’s bottom are so pale is that you’re supposed to bake your stone by itself for 30-60 min to heat it up 😅 so those were my learning moments.
The win however was that the crust was SO nice and crispy and much less thick compared to my Dutch oven crusts! My husband said the bread itself feels softer too. Definitely will be attempting again soon! I think I prefer this outcome to my usual DO bakes despite the kinks that need to be worked out!
My process:
500g bread flour 71% water 20% starter 2% salt
Autolyse flour and all but 20g water for 30 min, mix in starter, add salt plus the leftover 20g water. Temp dough and set my timer according to the sourdough journey’s temp chart (it’s just my approximate time, I usually go over by 30-60 min, reading my dough instead of the chart) Slap and folds until cohesive. 4 sets of coil folds at 30-45 min intervals. Shaped and into a banneton when dough felt right (bubbles on top and throughout, jiggly, not sticky to the touch, etc.) Cold ferment for approx 20 hours. Preheated oven to 250°C with pizza stone in (just the oven’s preheat, which was my problem with the bottom). Dumped dough onto a piece of cooking paper, scored and used my pizza peel to get the bread onto the pizza stone. On bottom rack poured boiling water into cookie sheet but my oven is small and I put the bread first and closed the door to maintain heat while I grabbed my boiled kettle. Will be reworking that procedure next time 😅 Baked for 20 min with the water cookie sheet, removed the cookie sheet and baked 20 more min. Flipped the bread around for an extra 4 min to even out the color of the crust a bit. Cooled for a smidge less than two hours before cutting for dinner!
Edit: typo