San Francisco Sourdough Bread

Like the other reviewers, I made this using the starter I created following Reinhart's directions. I made this sourdough bread twice.

The first time, I should have added more flour to the dough because in hindsight it was too wet and didn't keep its shape after I took it out of the mold. The second time I made it, I really made sure that the dough was not too sticky, which meant that I had to keep adding a little flour at a time as I mixed it by hand. It took quite a bit more flour to get to the right texture. This time the bread came out of the brotform and really kept its shape.

I made both the purist version and the version with the added yeast. Both tasted great but I preferred the rise on the one with yeast.

San Francisco sourdough was my first attempt at sourdough after having to refresh my mother starter. I followed Peter’s directions (or at least I thought I did) and used 4 oz of the mother starter with appropriate portions of water and flour, and let it rise at room temperature for 6-8 hours. I then put it in the refrigerator so it was ready to use the next day when I planned to make this recipe.

The next day I combined all the ingredients and put in the ‘fridge to ferment overnight. The next day I shaped the dough for proofing. I let the dough sit out for 4 hours like suggested, but there was no rise. Even after 7 hours there was still no rise. At this point I gave up and decided just to bake it.

This was my first "dud” from Peter’s book. The finished product was really dense because it didn’t rise at all.

I emailed Peter and he said my mistake was that I didn’t let the mother starter refresh to double its’ size. I paid more attention to the 6-8 hour timeframe instead of the results. He said that very old mother starters (mine was 3 weeks old) need extra time to rise to double its’ size. I later tried this again with another piece of my original mother starter and it took around 13 hours to double in size.

The taste of the recipe was very good, but I feel the mistakes made make it very difficult for me to give it an accurate review. I will rate this recipe "4 stars” for now because I can see the recipe has potential. I hope to update this review when I get a chance to bake it again with a working starter.

I've made another attempt at sourdough bread- this time using the recipe for San Francisco sourdough bread. Actually since I added whole wheat flour, it is more of a pain au levain style bread. I replaced 2 1/2 cups of the white flour with whole wheat, added 3 T vital gluten and increased the water by 1/4 cup.

Since my past sourdough failures, I was scared to use only the wild yeast. I followed the directions for the mixed method which used instant yeast combined with sourdough.

The result was wonderful. The flavor was complex, rich and deep. The bread raised beautifully. I made two loaves, one round and one long. I didn't bake the bread quite long enough and the round loaf was not quite done in the middle. We enjoyed it anyway, but next time I'll know to bake the round loaf longer.

And there will be a next time, as this bread won big at our house!

This was my first attempt at making sour dough bread and I am extremely pleased with the results. I made the seed starter and then the Mother starter and finally this bread. I decided against the purist formula for my first attempt and added a bit of yeast. Next time I'll try the purist form. The bread had a wonderful texture but not the real sour taste of sour dough bread. I think trying this one again without yeast may give it more of that flavor or maybe an older sour dough starter? I love the crispy outer crust and the lovely soft interior. I baked mine in one large round loaf and on my baking stone. I prepared the oven for hearth baking. I plan on keeping my Mother starter and feeding it so I can have sourdough bread more often. I know my hubby and son will like that since they both love sourdough bread and it's expensive if I can find it at all here.

I'm going to do this review in 2 parts - the first part is of the process and part 2 will be of taste and results since I need to wait until tomorrow morning to cut open these delicious looking sourdough boules so they have proper resting time.

I used Peter's mother starter as the wild yeast starter for this and pretty much followed his recipe as close as possible. I made the "purist" version without adding any instant yeast. So I had the starter resting on Saturday and then made the dough last night. Following Peter's recipe I let the dough refrigerate overnight to retard it. Also in the dough stage I used my KitchenAid Artisan mixer to do the kneading/mixing (mostly on low speed but for the times Peter indicates).

The interesting characteristic of this sourdough is that the resting dough (in fridge and when you remove it to ferment the day of baking) looks a bit lax - it doesn't rise much and it seems like it won't produce. I also used white bread flour for this (Gold Medal) and so the dough is very white and kind of plain/pale looking. However if you follow the directions for baking and make sure to steam the oven the result is amazing - it totally transforms into beautiful loaves. I made 2 boules - both came out rich caramel and crispy exterior. Bottoms are crispy and hard too - I removed the baking parchment paper about 5-8 min before I took them out of the oven. I also steamed the oven by putting hot water in a pan on the bottom rack throughout the entire bake. I baked for 12 min and then another 25-30 per Peter's directions.

The scores I made using a simple razor blade (brand new so it's sharp) and it resulted in beautiful scores - as you can see in the attached images.

I'll post my review of the taste when we eat this tomorrow. If you follow Peter's instructions as close as possible you'll end up with wonderful loaves.

-Trevor James