The sourdough Starter Thread

[Snoop Puss]

It's a palaver doing the calculations if you do them yourself. I've seen some calculators online in English, but my Spanish flour supplier has one that is so easy to use I can't be doing with the English ones. Do you speak any Spanish or use Google Translate? If so, have a look at this: https://www.elamasadero.com/calculadora-masa-madre

Harina is flour; líquido is liquid (water, milk or oil, usually); 8 or 12 horas is the number of hours you want your preferment to ferment for; calcular cantidades is to tell it to calculate amounts. Masa madre is your sourdough starter.
In the results, it tells you how much flour, liquid and starter to use for your preferment, and then how much of everything you'll need for the final dough. You'll see the figures don't quite match as it tells you to keep some of your preferment back as your future starter.

[Bren In Pots]

Thanks for the link Snoop

[Containergardener]

I'm.going to have a go too

[Snoop Puss]

How's it going, CG? I made a tasty but not at all pretty loaf the other day. Still went down the same way as a nicer-looking loaf!

[Bren In Pots]

I use the same slash pattern for my loaf sometimes it looks perfect others it’s rather lopsided

[Snoop Puss]

In my case, Bren, I made a rookie error: I used water at about 8 ºC to make up the final dough. Too late to rectify by the time I'd poured it all in... I should have left it overnight, but we really wanted some bread, so in the oven it went. Decent oven spring given that it went in looking extremely flat and sorry for itself.

[Bren In Pots]

There's one thing with sourdough even a flat loaf tastes fine with soup

[Containergardener]

What flour are you using?
Are you oven cooking or crockpot?

[Bren In Pots]

CG I use half white, half whole meal bread flour, baking my loaf in a cast iron Dutch oven placed instead my electric oven.
There used to be lots of photos on this thread but they all disappeared with a forum upgrade

[Containergardener]

I was wondering what happened to the photos when I looked through the thread, thought it was me.

Thanks I like the idea of a mixed flour.

[Bren In Pots]

A few photos.

My Dutch oven with lid off.
Proving basket.
The Lame I made for slashing loaves.

[Snoop Puss]

Gorgeous loaf, Bren. My proving baskets are a bit too splayed, so my bread never look as lovely and round as that. It's a proper beauty.

I must get Mr Snoop to make me a decent lame. Out of interest, how often do you change the blade?

[Bren In Pots]

Snoop I get 2 cuts to each corner (making it with a sharpie pen) so thats 8 cuts in all before changing.

Forgot to say my basket is a ordinary wicker that I lined.
I don't use it lined anymore though because I line the basket with greaseproof then lift the whole lot into the hot Dutch oven.

[Snoop Puss]

Snoop I get 2 cuts to each corner (making it with a sharpie pen) so thats 8 cuts in all before changing.

Forgot to say my basket is a ordinary wicker that I lined.
I don't use it lined anymore though because I line the basket with greaseproof then lift the whole lot into the hot Dutch oven.

Thanks for the info about the blade. I should change mine more often, then.

Since seeing your basket, I've been thinking about adopting a more steeply sided basket as a banneton. I don't use a Dutch oven but a spun iron dome that sits on an iron plate (I chose this because it's extremely light in weight). So that means I can upturn my dough onto the plate and bob the dome over the top. Meaning the top of the dough when in the banneton is now the bottom of the dough on the plate. When you lift the dough out of your basket, what happens? Is the top of the dough in the banneton still the top in the Dutch oven? Not sure if I'm explaining myself well. But I'm intrigued by your method. You've got a lovely round loaf that I can't achieve at all.

[Bren In Pots]

Yep I prove in the basket lined with greaseproof then lift it into the Dutch oven by holding opposite corners of the paper, the loaf is still the same way up. If MrP is around its easier if we both hold 2 corners each, but its doable on your own.
Before I started using the paper my loaf used to go flat when I tipped it into the Dutch oven.
So this way works better for me.