Niels Provos' Sourdough Experiments

It turns out that Niels Provos also makes/made sourdough bread. He made his own sourdough bread from scratch, including making the starter and experimenting with the parameters. Don't buy a sourdough starter pack if you are interested in making your own sourdough, follow his instructions to make your own. It might be best to wait until the weather warms up first, since bread likes constant warmth.

The reason I found his pages is that I wanted to clarify some of the instructions. Our last bread was a bit flat because I left it overnight before cooking and it had well and truly fallen by then. Once you add the yeast and salt the show has started and you have to cook it once it has risen (the second time).

We are making our third loaf today. To make it fit into a normal day we seperated and fed the baby sponge last night, and mixed in the yeast etc. this morning. Last time we did everything except the cooking on the first day, which is where we went wrong.

I wanted to clarify why you have to make it rise twice. You let it rise once, then you transfer it to the cooking container and let it rise again. The instructions I was working from don't make it clear whether you should knead the dough during that transfer, but there are plenty of guides on the Internet that make it clear you should deflate the bread after the first rising, as too much carbon dioxide is bad for the yeast. You should also oil the bread before the first rising so that it doesn't stick to the container, I'll try that next time.