Sourdough

In this chapter

• Baking the loaf — The oven stage, when heat sets crust and crumb, gelatinizes starch, and turns a proofed dough into bread.
• Bulk fermentation — The first rise of mixed dough, when yeast and bacteria produce gas, acid, and flavor before the loaf is shaped.
• Dough development — The gaining of dough strength and extensibility through mixing, rest, and folds as gluten networks organize.
• Final proof — The last rise of a shaped loaf, when the dough relaxes and gains the gas it will carry into the oven.
• Levain — A preferment built from starter, flour, and water for a particular dough, mixed and fermented on a schedule.
• Mixing — Combining flour, water, salt, and leaven so that gluten can form and fermentation can begin evenly.
• San Francisco sourdough — A civic bread story, a commercial bakery style, and a laboratory isolation — three layers that are easy to mash into one myth.
• Scoring — Cutting the surface of a proofed loaf so that oven spring opens along an intended line rather than at a random burst.
• Shaping — Organizing fermented dough into a taut loaf so that it can rise upward in the proof and the oven.
• Sourdough starter — A maintained culture of flour and water that hosts wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria for leavening bread.
• Sourdough troubleshooting — A map from common loaf faults — dense crumb, weak rise, harsh sourness — back to starter, fermentation, strength, and heat.