Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 5

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

OK. So, you know how I said that I wasn't going to be learning about bakers' percents? I sort of did it by accident. And it might even be useful.

In using baker’s percentage, each ingredient in a recipe is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight, and the flour weight is always expressed as 100%.

So if I have 4 cups of flour (100%) and 1 cup of water, then the water would be 25%. Huh. I learned about it by accident here, when I was reading about the role of oil in bread. They say that, on average, the oil in pizza dough will be between 2% and 5%. So in a 4c of flour recipe, 1/4 cup of oil would be 5%. I am making approximately a 4 cup recipe, but then there's more flour hiding in the start, and I'm not quite sure how to go about determining how much. But it would put the 1/4c oil that I'm thinking about putting in right about in the right range.

So I'm going with 1/4c oil for this variant. Here's today's recipe:

Today's Sourdough Bread
3/4c sourdough start
1c water
~1T honey
1/4c olive oil
3 1/2-4c whole wheat flour

So I baked it, and it turned out the best of any of the loaves so far. Really, the only complaint I have is that it's so flat. It spread out, rather than puffing up, and I'm not sure how to troubleshoot that. I'm thinking I'll have to take my questions to the sourdough group. Once it's cut, it's shaped a lot like biscotti.

The crust is reasonable. It's crunchy, rather than almost not there like the white bread, but it's a pleasant kind of crunch. The texture is nice. The flavor is good. The kids are eating it, and describing it as "awesome, except more hard crust". I think Dragon, my fussy crust guy, would adapt.

I just wish it was a touch taller, so we could make better sandwiches. 

"Mom, can I have another bread with jelly?"
"We can have bread, and jelly! Together!"

And they both at it all up. Yum.