Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day
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Recipe Review
bes30 from ,
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.
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