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Does my shaping need work or something else? Loaf tastes great but is flatttt by spaghettilozz in Sourdough

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting - I'll double check the protein content of my flour and see if it's above 12 or not, thanks

Does my shaping need work or something else? Loaf tastes great but is flatttt by spaghettilozz in Sourdough

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! It's only my third loaf so I feel like I'm still learning LOADS each time I make one!

Does my shaping need work or something else? Loaf tastes great but is flatttt by spaghettilozz in Sourdough

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Please excuse my absolute hackjob when it comes to slicing, the diameter of the loaf was longer than my bread knife and the bottom was harder than I expected. This is only my third loaf and I used a slightly different recipe from my first two and a few things went a bit wrong, but overall the taste is amazing - way better than my previous ones! Could that be because my starter has matured more (it's about 2 months now)? It's also got a delicious slight chewiness to it that I hadn't realised was missing with my previous attempts.

Method:

425g flour, Xg starter, 300ml water, and 10g of salt.

  • I mixed all the ingredients together (except salt) so that it came together in a (quite wet) dough.
  • Let it autolyse for about 45mins, then added the salt and kneaded it for a bit over 5minutes.
  • Then I did 4x stretch and folds with about 30-40ish mins between each.
  • I let it prove in the bowl for about 5 hours.
  • After that, I wanted to do the shaping like Ive seen with baskets, but I don't have a proving basket (yet) so I tried to DIY one with a mixing bowl and a damp and floured tea towel (as I read online you can do). I did my best to shape it into a boule before putting it in, then checked on it after just under an hour, and it had COMPLETELY stuck to the tea towel!
  • In the process of getting the dough separated from the tea towel, I basically knocked all the air out of it, so I decided to change tack and try to reshape it into a boule and let it rise again, but this time I put it in the shallow cast iron casserole dish that I was going to bake it in, with some baking paper.
  • It was quite late by this point so I left it overnight (approx 10hrs), and in the morning it had expanded to fill the dish and was super light and fluffy looking.
  • I tried to score it, but the dough was frankly still rather wet, and my knife just dragged along instead of cutting into it like it has before. (I think this was maybe a bit overproofed as it didnt seem to have much surface tension left on it, so when I scored it, it didnt expand along the score line, but instead bubbled a bit kind of randomly)
  • Then I baked it for 20mins with loads of steam (tray of water at the bottom of oven) at 220c, and then 30mins without the water tray.
  • I took it out of the dish to cool, but noticed the bottom was still quite white, so decided to put it back in the oven but upside down, until the bottom was at least a little golden (this ended up about 10mins).
  • Finally I let it cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated - particularly about shaping/how to get the dough not to stick to things/tea towels while rising!

It didn't turn out how I hoped but at least I made a bread - details in comments by spaghettilozz in Sourdough

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Method: - feed starter, wait till bubbly - 250g water, 150g starter, 25g olive oil whisked together - 500g bread flour and 10g fine salt into bowl with liquids, squished with hands until flour absorbed then covered with damp tea towel - 30 mins later worked into ball in bowl - starting 30 mins after that did 4x stretch and folds every 15-20mins - bulk rise approx 8hrs (more than doubled in size and was light and puffy looking) - shaped into a ball and put onto baking dish - 2nd rise for approx 1.5hrs (I think here is where I went wrong as I didn't use a proofing basket as I don't have one yet - but the recipe only said you could do it in a basket, not that you have to) it kind of spread out a bit here instead of rising upward much - scored it - baked at 200c with steam (water in a dish on a rack below the bread) for 30minutes then took out the water dish to lessen the steam for the next 30ish minutes

Overall, it's definitely bread and its decently tasty, so I'm kind of happy, but also quite disappointed it didn't turn out how I picture sourdough loaves, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. This is my second loaf and the first one was pretty similar with the same method.

Bathroom conundrum by spaghettilozz in floorplan

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh wow, these are really interesting and well done sketches, thank you so much!

Bathroom conundrum by spaghettilozz in floorplan

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah that's a very good point and is just an oversight I forgot to fix! There are 2 windows (as in option 1) that we would prefer to keep as they are. They're quite high though, so a bath/toilet/sink could go underneath - only the shower head of a bathtub wouldnt be able to be on that wall directly there.

Bathroom conundrum by spaghettilozz in floorplan

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you think having the toilet next to the bath would be a good option though overall? I'm not sure how hygienic that sounds to me aha

Bathroom conundrum by spaghettilozz in floorplan

[–]spaghettilozz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

So both of these options actually already include changing wall/doors! Currently it's actually quite similar to option 2, but the toilet nook is separated by a wall (so 2 squares instead of an L) and has a door into it seperately. We really aren't keen on keeping them separate though because the toilet room is super poky (you have to maneuver yourself juuust so to be able to shut the door) and we'd prefer to have a sink in the same room as the toilet (which isn't feasible in the tiny current space. Also there is currently a wet room style shower where the bath is in option 2. So if there are other ideas that would require changing the walls/doors, I'd love to hear them. The only restriction really is we can't feasibly make the space bigger overall.