First attempt

Roughly followed guidelines from thatsourdoughgal - best foolproof white sourdough bread recipe.

Fermentolyse: - 225 g starter - 550 g water @ 95 F - 1000 g gold medal unbleached AP

Rest for 1 hour. Dough temp at 78 F. Added 20 g salt and 40 g water. Kneaded and slap and folds for about 10 minutes until smooth.

3 rounds of stretch and folds (1st and 2nd round) and coil folds (2nd and 3rd round) roughly 30 min-1 hr apart. Dough temp 75 F. Into oven w light on for 3 hours then moved to fridge in bulk ferment container - I was leaving the house until the next day.

Roughly 18 hours later - back home, pulled out of fridge, had exploded out of container probably 3x the volume 😬 (see pic) had to pick off crusty bits where dough was exposed to air

Dumped out onto counter, did a couple slap and folds to knock out some air, divided into 2 loaves and preshaped. Dough temp 51 F. 1 hr counter rest. Final shaping (difficult bc of cold dough - envelope fold and single caddy clasp), counter rest for 2.5 hours, started preheating oven and DO to 450 F.

At this point, loaf A was at 68 F and loaf B was at 65 F so I decided to bake A first and let B rest on the counter longer. Had to pinch together the seams a couple more times once the dough was warmed up a bit.

Loaf into preheated DO with spritz of water for steam.

Loaf A: 30 min covered, 15 min uncovered, cut after 3 hours.

Loaf B: 20 min covered, 25 min uncovered, better scoring, cut next day.

Loaves have nice soft texture, crust feels nice to me, crisp but not hard

NEXT TIME: - I lowered the water amount by a bit (25 g per loaf) as instructed in the recipe since I was using AP flour, but I felt like it could’ve handled higher hydration and that might’ve given a more open crumb. Next time would try 640 g total water. - obviously, timeline was a little out of wack, next time will try to follow more closely - need a bigger container .. - bread flour once I run out of AP - any other tips?