Second sourdough batch

Before I begin, let me put your mind at ease - although I do intend to bake a couple of sourdough loaves every weekend, I'm not going to blog about each of them in turn. I thought I'd mention this week's as we're still in the early days of the process and the first one of this batch turned out a little odd.

I bought a new loaf tin this week, so I can bake two at once, instead of having to spend literally the whole weekend with something either baking or proving. This one's actually a little slimmer than the other, so it's producing a taller loaf. I've noticed that the base of this loaf turned out completely solid for about a centimetre up, which I'm putting down to there being too much dough in the tin - it would've risen past the top during the second prove if there hadn't been a teatowel covering it. I'm thinking that the weight of the dough on top flattened out the base a bit during this prove, possibly - the top was also unusually flat, so it didn't seem to rise much in the oven.

The texture on the whole is still looking good; getting more open still, and still nicely elastic. I'm a bit concerned about what seems to be a slightly moist, rubbery quality to it, which I'm putting down to fractional underbaking. Cooler for longer next weekend, I think, this could be me needing to get to grips with my oven. Flavour-wise I think I'm onto something good here, the sourness is really coming out now and the bread has a big, full flavour right through the crust. It's gaining character.

This far it's being mainly used for morning toast, and to accompany cheese. I may start attempting sandwiches with it at some point but I have yet to see what my new job's lunch arrangement is, so we'll see if it's worth bothering before going down that path. There's talk of a wine, cheese and bread event going on at our local wine merchant, so I need to get my bread in shape for that - there's some serious amateur bakers attending and I don't want to be shown up!