Sourdough Day

Nearly a year ago, I decided to get into sourdough breadmaking. I made my own starter from flour, water, and nothing the natural yeasts that are found in whole-grain flour. After about a week, I had my first starter. It took a lot of tries to get right, especially considering that I live at about 2800 meters (approximately 9000ft) above sea level. Everything changes at altitude. Water boils at a lower temperature, atmospheric pressure is lower, ferminting/rising the dough takes much less time and can over-ferment before you know it. I must have tried a dozen times before "getting it right". When I say "getting it right", I mean successfully baking my first actually edible loaf of rustic sourdough bread using my starter and a recipe I'd been tweaking and perfecting with the help fo ChatGPT. Note to home cooks and bakers: ChatGPT (and certainly other AIs, but ChatGPT seems to handle this type of query best) is your best friend. It can help you figure out why things are going wrong because of conditions like altitude, humidity, temperatures, how you're working your dough, or any other problem you might be having.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the four loaves I baked today using an initial overnight cold-fermentation, a secondary fermentation for bulk, and then formed the boules and did a nother overnight (16 hour) fermentation in the refrigerator.