First Sourdough Success

Hi guys,

Not a bad result on my second attempt of my sourdough journey. I wanted to share this with you in case you want to give me some tips on what I can improve.

My 1 mo old starter is made from scratch. I started it using whole wheat flour at 100% hydration. Today I feed it with 20% dark rye and 80% tipo 00 Polselli Classica at 50% hydration. I learned that a stiff starter does less damage to the gluten, making life more difficult for acetic acid. Italians call their version of stiff starter “Lievito Madre”, translated to Mother Yeast. They have all sorts of methods to maintain their starters such as washing, bathing, rolling, strapping, watering, etc. I keep mine simple as I store it in the fridge and take it out to feed it when I want to use it. Otherwise, I feed it once a week.

Here’s my 70% hydration recipe yielding 6 balls, altered from Vito’s double fermented poolish recipe on youtube. In baker’s percentage (All percentages are vs. the recipe’s total amount of flour):

Preferment 50% hydration
– Riped Starter 50g (5%)
– Tipo 00 264g (26.7%)
– Water 132g (13.3%)

Autolysis 50% hydration
– Tipo 00 693g (70%)
– Water 346g (35%)

Main dough:
– Preferment 445g (45%)
– Autolysis 1,039g (105%)
– Water 198g (20%)
– Salt 30g (3%)
– Oil 10g (1%)

Schedule. H0 is 0 hour passed 6 am on Wednesday:

H0 Take starter out of fridge

H0.5 Feed starter 2:10:5 (starter, flour, water), leave it at RT (mine is roughly at 22C)

H11 Take necessary amount for the recipe and feed it 1:2:1, cover and leave at RT. Take the necessary amount for your starter and feed it as usual 2:10:5. Cover and leave the starter at RT. Discard the rest (I like to add 1/3 of water to the discard to get a 100% hydration discard. I make wonderful sourdough pikelets with it). Cover and place the discard in the fridge

H12 Place back the starter in the fridge. Leave the recipe starter at RT

H14 The recipe starter is doubled. Form a dough with the all the preferment ingredients. Cover and leave it at RT

H35 Form a dough with all the autolysis ingredients. Cover and leave at RT

H36 Using a dough mixer, roughly dissolve the preferment at low speed with the main dough’s water. At any point in time, stop the mixer if the dough’s temp reaches 26C and wait for the temp to go down a bit. Incorporate the autolysis dough at low speed until homogeneous consistency. Mix at medium speed until most of the dough is detached from the bowl. Add the salt and mix for 3 min. Add the oil for another 3 min. Take out the dough from the bowl and place it on the countertop once all the dough is detached from the border of the bowl. Cover with a bowl and leave it rest

H37 Remove the bowl, put a little bit of olive oil in your hand and on top of the dough. Place your hands underneath the dough and pull it up hard. Don’t be afraid. While always keeping the top on top, do a serie of stretch and fold until top of dough is silky and form a ball. Cover and rest

H37.5 Uncover and cut dough balls. Oil the countertop, your hands and the top of each dough balls prior to ball them. Balling, always with top on top. Oil on dough balls a oid the dough to tear while tightening them. Oil the proofing box and place the dough balls in it. Cover and place the proofing box in the fridge
H58 Take the box out of the fridge and leave at RT

H60 Bake the pizzas. I used a Ooni Koda 12. I rotated the stone 180deg 10 min before baking, sending the cold front to the very hot back to avoid sticking the pizza to the front while the back burns. I completely turned down the heat for the first 30 sec until I was able to turn the pizza and then I turned it back up to the max for the rest of the cooking time.

Quite happy with the result. Crust was crispy but soft. I found it very light and on the verge of being overproofed. It was fragile while stretching, teared it an created a small hole once on the peel (repaired it by pinching together both sides of the hole) The main downside, I found it quite tasteless from what I expected. The dough smelled way better while mixing it. That’s why I think I will skip the line and purchase an Ischia starter to bring more taste to the cooked dough.

Any thoughts folks?

Cheers from Quebec, Canada!

by South_Degree6519