My Sourdough Adventure – Olivia's Kitchen

First off .. as of early last month it was hard to find flour or yeast. I remember the comment I made was ” what’s this ? Suddenly everyone turn to be a baker ? ”

But anyway .. yesterday morning after feeding my 5 years old starter , I decided maybe I’ll bake sourdough with it . I used Ken Fork method . Have to say I had fun making it . It has been six months since the last time I made it . So I wasn’t even sure but I thought heck I got plenty of time not going anywhere , so why not …

This method requires no mixer , just bowl n your hand . I think it was about 8 when I started to mix the dough. The book calls it autolyse . Mix the water and flour n let it rest 30 minutes ..

30 minutes later I added the salt and the levain ( fed starter ) and did the pinch method to mix the salt into the dough . Then folded it 3 times within the first hour . Right before I went to bed by 10 I folded it one last time . This how it looked last night

I was by 530 , there’s barely any activity and I thought I had failed . Except I realized that it’s only been 6 hours and my kitchen was cooler , it was 66 F , it was a chilly night . I knew it’d need more time . I let it continued to ferment while I got workout done , went running , made crackers and voila ..by noon it was this …

I added flour around the bowl before sliding the dough out carefully . I didn’t want to lose all the gas it has built . I then shaped the dough , again carefully . Only stretch n folded few times . Ken Fork explained this better on his YouTube video . I hardly handling this while shaping it . Placed it in the banneton , generously covered it with rice flour . Then I used shower cap to cover it while it’s doing final proof ..

Within 3 hours it has grown quite a bit so I did the finger dent test . It was ready , luckily I’ve been warming up my dutch oven for 40 minutes by now .