Jack is cooking (Baking) Sourdough Bread 11/02/09

Well Hello Internet!

Tonight i baked a new loaf of bread, and i did it exactly the same way as i did the last loaf, except i baked it a little longer.  I think i seem to have finally got it down!

heres what i did:

this morning (at 9 am)
i took 1.5 cups of starter
mixed it with 3 cups of water
and 4 cups of white flour

i let it sit until 7 pm

this is what it looked like:
















i then removed 1.5 cups of this sponge and put it back in the starter

to this i then added
half a cup of olive oil
1.5 tablespoons of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar

after i folded in those ingredients i folded, and then kneaded in
3 cups of flour

i let it sit for 20 minutes:
















After that i removed 1/3 of the dough to save to make pizza tomorrow! (follow link!)

I folded the remaining dough into the loaf and let it rise for 2.5 hours (it seems to take longer now that the summer is over).

I baked it in the oven for 15 minutes at 450° and then turned the oven down to 350° and baked it for another 35 minutes.

Here it is: