About the bread

It's been a bad few weeks for bread. For some reason the last three weekends have produced really dodgy loaves, weirdly rubbery and a bit moist, heavy on the bottom and ridiculously over-aerated at the top. Not nice at all - one particularly bad one wasn't even good enough for toast.

So, remedial action. I'd noticed that the dough, which is normally quite loose in this recipe, had been getting more and more liquid, up to the point where it was really more of a batter, and was behaving a bit like crumpet batter at that. So towards the end of last week, I woke my starter up, poured off some of the goopy liquid that was collecting on the top, and fed it with a much more flour-heavy feed than usual. One more chunky feed later and the weekend's baking could start. Again, I added a bit more flour than the recipe demanded.

The most important thing I did was to use the right amount of starter in the initial rise. I'd been using double the amount, which was probably the root of my problems.

The result? We're back in the game. A great, fluffy, flavoursome loaf this time, this one almost too good for toast. It did get a bit lively during the second prove, as the following will show:


The dough was pretty powerful - aggressive, one might almost say. Rumours of my starter's demise are greatly exaggerated :)