I did start with 700g of water, when autolysing, and added roughly 30g more during the initial knead.
That was not enough.
The dough was stiff and hard to manipulate and even harder to hydrate after the fact because this dummins spilled all the dang water.
Nevertheless, it was easier than the last time. So. Things to note.
- I need a smidge more than 730g of water to get the right consistency
- It is going to take two days to make bread whether I like it or not
- Pure wholemeal starter is slow as hell
- Plastic shopping bags do not make any kind of replacement for cling wrap overnight-in-the-fridge nonsense
That's some dried out dough there. Not good.
However, I did turn it out onto flour and learned: vinyl mess mats are not as good a prep surface as actual wood or kitchen countertop
I did successfully shape the baby loaves and set them in my improv proofing baskets:
I later put a plastic bag over them to protect them from whatever.
Fortunately, in four hours, the loaf rose a little, and I figured out I should use the chopping board to help turn out the loaves.
As you can see, I definitely used enough flour on the base of the basket. One solid dusting later:
I think I took like a quarter cup of flour off of that thing.
Scored!
After 20 minutes at 270 Celcius, it was starting to look a lot like real bread!
At 230 Celsius, it took forty minutes to get to the lovely golden brown you saw in the splash pic. As for the finished loaf?
It turned out a little bit doughy, but it's still edible and the crust was not burned, so I'm taking that win.
Next week, I'm getting my wholemeal starter fed on the evening before so it has all night to rise properly. I am also going to use closer to 750g of water and keep the rest of it further than my flailing arms. Just in case.
Meanwhile, the family is happy to have sandwiches.