Life Of Sour Dough - Baking Blog Challenge #3

The Life Of Sour Dough

The life of Sour dough is very eventful to say the least, there are many obstacles along the way for example some difficulties I had while making sour dough was not knowing what to expect for instance temperature was key, One night I left my dough in a cooler part of my house and could not figure out why it wasn't doubling in size, I later found out that the temperature of the room was too cold for the dough to ferment Another thing I discovered was that when I got the barm stage after the third day I had to "refresh the dough" many times to keep the dough alive till time to bake, Another difficult task I found was finding the right combination of flour and water because while the dough is  mixing in the mixer the proper amounts of water and flour are critical because it makes sure everything is pulled away from the bottom and sides of the mixing bowl, and from the mixing bowl you take the dough to a flour bench to shape it into the first initial shape a boule and after making the boule shape you can choose your desired shape after that you stick it in the proofer and follow the proper cutting instructions depending on shape. Bread flour Bread flour Bread flour, I went through multiple bags of bread flour while making my sour dough and I never expected to use as much as I did. The actual baking process of the sour dough was fairly easy but challenging to say the least. There is many ways to shape your sour dough but I was assigned a traditional baguette and the fendu shape. In the end of all the chaos of making, baking and preparing the sour dough I really enjoyed the sour dough making process it allowed me to challenge myself and learn new method to shape and form me into a chef.

The picture below is a great representation of what a sour dough starter looks like

https://www.theperfectloaf.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/foodtravelthought_starter-1.jpg

The picture below is an image of barm.

https://breadcakesandale.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/ball-in-proving-basket.jpg

The picture found below is what a finish baguette looks like

https://d2gk7xgygi98cy.cloudfront.net/8-3-large.jpg