Baking

Next morning, when I peaked at the dough in the fridge, it looked frankly a little flat and disappointing :-(  But hopefully it embiggens during baking...

The baking instructions a more complicated than my usual system, which is "bung it in the oven until you can smell bread".

It says to use "dutch ovens", whatever those are - turns out its a kind of big pot with a lid that you can put in the oven.  We have one earthenware pot that I could use, but two loaves. The idea is that you:

1. preheat the oven with the ovens in it
2. put the loaves in the ovens, put the lids on, and bake for 20 minutes
3. turn the temperature down, and bake for 10 minutes
4. take the lids of the ovens off, and bake for 25 minutes

Frankly, all this seems like a massive pain in the bottom.  So, given I've only got one pot anyway, I decided to do an experiment where I do one loaf the "dutch oven" way, and the other the "bung it in the oven" way.

When I got to step 4, the dutch oven loaf was looking pretty moist an soggy.  Maybe we'll be eating lunch in a cafe after all...

In the end I took the dutch oven loaf out first, because it (or something) was burning on the bottom (although it wasn't really browned on the top).

This doesn't look much like the picture in Emma Christensen's instructions...

...but to be fair, I used wholemeal flour where she used white flour, and I've got a gas oven, where hers seems to be electric. Also this is my first sour dough loaf, where I doubt it was Emma's first; I think I can let myself off the hook a little on the "loaf beauty" scale.

Anyway, the proof is in the eating...

After ten minutes, when the non-dutch loaf was starting to brown, I took that out too.

This looks a little more like Emma's picture (if less golden and food-porny).

Luckily, all this days' long process finished just in time for Saturday Lunch.  So we'll soon see if it's bread and cheese as usual, or whether we opt for going to the cafe because my bread is Too Yucky...