Gabriel,
I've been experimenting with sourdough off and on for several years. I
started by using packaged starters, then began using food-grade acetic,
lactic and fumaric acids like the bread machine mixes (and supermarket
sourdough _read the label_) use, and am currently maintaining a sponge
starter made from yeast, flour and water in the refrigerator and using that
to inoculate the dough. I bake sourdough the same way you do, except my
starter was made from commercial baker's yeast and developed its sourness
as it aged.
Here's how I make sourdough bread: I dump about a cup of starter in the
bread machine bowl, which mixes and kneads better and faster than I can,
add about two cups (~300 g) of bread flour, about 1 tablespoon (15 g) of
salt, and mix in enough water to make a firm dough. After the flour has
hydrated, I add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and continue mixing. All
measurements are very approximate. It is hard to screw this up. After
mixing/kneading and about 1 hour rise time, I dump the dough into an oiled
plastic bowl with a tight-fitting lid, and place it in the refrigerator
until I get home from work the next day. Then I take the bowl out, let it
warm on the counter, and dump the dough into a bread pan. It usually needs
to rise for 3 to 4 hours at room temperature before baking. If I want to
make a round loaf on the baking stone I usually knead in more flour by hand
because by this time the dough is pretty slack and somewhat sticky.
I then put the pan in a cold oven, set the temperature to 350 F (176 C) and
bake for an hour. If I want more sourness, I just punch the dough down and
allow it to rise again. There is a point, however, at which the yeast,
swimming in their own waste, become incapable of producing enough gas to
rise satisfactorily, at which time I've managed to save the dough by
kneading in more flour and adding a little baker's yeast.
When I started making bread this way, I was pleased with the increasing
sourness I was achieving, but most striking was the chewy texture and
crispy crust the bread developed. I thought one needed a fancy
steam-injected oven to get that kind of texture. I suspect that if one
added sugar to the recipe, instead of allowing the bugs to convert starch
into sugar, the texture would be more WonderBread-ish.
I'm still playing around with technique, however I've found that sourness
is related to the amount of starter used, and its age, as well as the time
the dough sits prior to baking, and the temperature of the dough. To make
a more sour bread, use more starter, or use older starter, or allow the
dough to stand longer before baking, or place the dough in a warmer place,
or do any combination of the above. The buffering capacity of the flour
you use will also affect the sourness, and the ease with which starch is
converted to sugars by enzyme activity varies, so using different flours
will achieve different results.
Like Ed, of B-I-L fame, opined earlier with regard to another aspect of
bread baking, I'm surprised at how much bad information has been published,
propagated and otherwise promulaged about sourdough over the years, and how
nobody has challenged the claims made, save for some food chemistry types
in academic settings, one of whose doctoral dissertation on sourdough bread
microbiology I was fortunate to stumble across some time ago.
On another matter, Fredericka's mysterious half-moon shaped lidded pan
sounds very much like one of those pans they use in the hospital. If you
choose to bake in it, I don't think it would be a good idea to tell your
guests what kind of pan you used! ;-)
Quinn