Bread that you will make in the Lesson - is it any good?
So generally during a Sourdough lesson students will make 2 Demi loaves that they then take home and bake. We have had many images of good loaves after students have baked them at home. This sounds like “well that’s how it should be” however it’s best to remember that we have only 3 hours to teach a bread process that typically takes a home baker around 18 hours to complete. What I mean by this is that if you take into account all the “waiting time” which the starter needs and bread dough needs then it would take around 18 hours. We compress this into 3 hours, and still hope to make 2 great loaves of bread to take home and bake. Our job is to teach the process so that the student can replicate it week in week out, having bread to take home is honestly just a nice byproduct.
However I have worked hard to ensure that those first loaves that are taken home are a success - the first bake is the one where you can instil a lifelong passion, so it’s worth it. This means that over the years we have changed many parts of the process just to try and get that instant reward for students.
Anyhow, last Sunday (8th Dec 2024, the last Taylor Swift Era concert was taking place across the street from our lesson !) we had a great lesson, great students, and much fun was had. As normal I make two loaves identical to the student’s loaves. The only difference being that as I’m demoing process with my loaves/dough then those loaves tend to get over handled and that’s not great for sourdough bread. Typically at the end of the lesson I’ll throw this dough in the fridge and then normally make family pizza with it on the evening. But this week I didn’t and come Tuesday evening I saw these two loaves sat in a plastic container in the fridge and thought “oh i’ll just cook them as loaves, they won’t be great but they will taste great”. They looked a bit flat when coming out of the fridge so I gave them 2 hours rest/rise on the counter top but didn’t reshape them or put them in banettons etc. Just pretty much dropped on counter top and left. Then I baked them. The images are below, totally unedited, straight off my iPhone.
I often tell my students that the bread images they see on IG or in the many excellent bread books (Tartine being my all time fav) need to be understood in context. That context being “generally folks only publish the very best bread images, that are specifically attempting for the ensuing photographs”, a bit like when you know you will be part of a photo shoot and you do everything to look your best. But that’s not actually what every loaf of bread looks like from that baker, that’s their gold medal attempt. Sourdough is fickle, well often can be fickle. The method we teach is less fickle, there is more leeway, it’s more robust, it’s not prima-donna sourdough.
These images below show exactly that - the bread was banged about during the lesson, was thrown in the fridge without a care for 3 days, dumped on the counter top, no re-shaping, no banneton, and then dropped in the oven. And yet it still has a great height to width ratio, it still has great interior, and it tastes amazing. This is the bread you will make in the lesson, the bread you will take home and bake, the bread you will take photos of day in-day out.
