Huge thanks to Benito, Mark Stone, DanAyo, MiniOven and so many of you!

I've been baking sourdough loaves off and on for 5+ years now and lurking on this forum. Started with the Tartine book and quickly moved to mostly baking Maurizio's excellent recipes. There has been a slow accumulation of experience and dare I say skill. But in the last ten days or so, I feel like I've had a major bump due to two aha moments - both thanks to you lovely people. This post is to express my gratitude to all of you who share here so generously from your well of experience. It helps immensely. Thank you!

A couple of weeks ago I was introduced to Andrew Janjigian's "The Loaf" recipe. I got pretty good oven spring even on my first attempt, so it got me excited. At the same time I stumbled on to Mark Stone's post highlighting Tom Cucuzza's work over on The Sourdough Journey and especially the bulk fermentation curve. Thanks to all those videos, I was reminded again of the importance of proper bulk fermentation (something I can recall MiniOven stressing many times on these threads). I also recalled Benito's frequent encouragement to use an aliquot jar to measure % rise. Armed with all these I set out to address the couple of issues I had with my first attempt at Andrew's Loaf.

I knew I had shorted bulk slightly due to timing issues for that one. So this time, I paid attention to temperature from the beginning (instead of trying to fix it in the later half of bulk). Second, I set aside a small lump in a tiny aliquot jar and third I kept in mind Tom's graph of when activity would ramp up. This allowed me to push fermentation beyond where I would have been comfortable just eyeballing how the dough looked. I have been on the other side and over fermented to a soupy mess - by a half hour probably (but now I know why that half hour made all the difference, thanks to Tom's graph) - something I never want to repeat ever again.

I also lowered bake time and temperature slightly for a thinner/less chewy crust, subbed some of the King Arthur APF with Central Milling APF for lower protein to get a softer crumb (Take 1 was a little chewier than I'd like. Maurizio says that higher protein flour will yield gummier crumb) and viola a loaf I am so thrilled with! 

Next stop, up the hydration slightly each iteration to get an even thinner, shattery crust as I remember Maurizio's "My Best Sourdough" has.

Thank you to one and all who share their experience here. You are a collective treasure! 

 Best,

GrinChaser