Hello Bob,
We are a bit careful when it comes to oat flour and oats. Although oats themselves do not contain gluten, they are often grown, processed, and transported alongside wheat, barley, and rye, which do contain gluten. We understand that some patients with celiac disease report experiencing symptoms similar to a gluten exposure even when eating gluten-free oats.

We will make a separate note of this, to clarify. We do not want anyone to get any discomfort or complaints using oats.

Hello EJ,
IF you want to bake one larger loaf, you have to adjust the baking time. This loaf will be around 1.5 kg, so the indication for the baking time would be 60 to 65 minutes. The other thing you can do is indeed split the dough into two equal pieces and bake two loaves. Then the baking time will stay 45 minutes.

Enjoy your baking!

Hallo Liesbeth,
Dankjewel voor je enthousiaste comment. Dat vinden we enorm plezierig om te horen 🙂
Heb al een tijdje geen thee gebruikt om krenten in te weken. Dat ga ik de volgende keer zeker ook nog doen, helemaal met favoriete thee Earl Grey! Dank voor de suggestie.

Geniet van het bakken,

Marieke

So wonderful of you to share this with us. We are always so happy to hear a recipe working well for other bakers. And especially when you have already tried before and maybe got a bit disheartened about the whole sourdough bread baking. We are also sure Ben from Kensington thinks it fantastic the combination of the SF starter with our recipe turned out so well for you.

Wishing you many more excellent loaves and many happy baking moment!

Marieke & Ed

Thank you Moira for your tip, this will also work very well, especially with smaller ovens.

Cover your bread with foil after 20 mins. It will still brown but not as fast.

Hello Pat,
Take another look at the recipe, it does ask you to make a poolish the night before 🙂
We would also ask you to first make the recipe, exactly as described before changing anything, so you have a good starting point, also to compare with if and when you want to change things, like cold retard (provided you are looking for more sour notes with a slower proofing process).
We are very satisfied with the taste of our PN with more subtle sour notes and a hint of ‘sweetness’ . We do not like it when sourness is too overpowering.
But look at our tips about more and less sour and more helpful hints if necessary: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…ough-tips/
We have no problem scoring the loaves, but if you do not have much experience with it, then we do have a few pointers for that too:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…onfidence/
Hope this helps.
Good luck with the sourdough baking!

The best mindset on the way to baking excellence 🙂
Most important is to keep focussen on the joy of baking. The hands on the dough, the smells, the cool oven spring, the bread that is maybe not perfect but delicious and full of goodness.

Enjoy!

Thanks so much for the reply and I love the comparison to children it’s so true!
I will say regardless I still came out with a decent bread and I will continue to troubleshoot till I get it just right! Great recipe.

Hello SB,
It is really hard for us to say it with confidence what went wrong, but we agree with you that the most logical explanation after this much time would be the inactivity of the sourdough culture. Make sure to refresh your culture the day before you are going to use it. Maybe your starter culture is still young and it needs a few more rounds to mature.
Also make sure the dough and surroundings have the right temperature. If it is (too) cold it might take much, much longer for the yeast in the culture to get going.
Read our tips for some more help:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…ough-tips/

Plus, this is what we always add – Starters are like children!

You cannot neglect them or leave them alone for too long plus they are unpredictable. They are all different with their own characteristics and quirky traits.
This is why, despite all the tips given, it can still be that your own culture is a mild and gentle type, never capable of producing a super sour loaf, or the other way around. If all else fails or you are not happy with your results, start a new or second culture and give it another go.

Best of luck with it!

Thanks Abi, glad you find it helpful.
Greetings from the low countries and enjoy your baking journey!

Hello Christie,
We have not had this comment before with this recipe, but we think that maybe there could be something slightly different with the flour you are using, needing a bit more moisture. Plus if your egg was a bit on the small side, this could be an explanation. So we would suggest using a bit more egg and if that is not enough, also use 5 to 10 grams more butter.
Hope this helps.

❤️
Thanks for your kind response. I am currently geeking out on your dough calculator. It’s a genius idea to offer this for folks to learn about bakers percentages. I appreciate how you take into account the water and flour content of the leavening to calculate the overall hydration. Most other websites I’ve seen only account for the flour and water added (without including the leavening) in their calculation so it’s a bit misleading. Not a huge deal, but I like your attention to detail. Keep up the good work!

Abi D.
Bozeman, MT, USA