My second attempt on long fermented sourdough. This time I tried to make baguette and pizza dough. While not perfect yet, both tests were a success and will be revisited again for sure.

This time I reduced the spelt content and went for a full kg worth of flour. Half of it I used for baguettes, the other dough I used for pizza.

Again I went with 60% hydration, which was too low for both doughs in the end. Though it is noteworthy that the dough was so stretchy that I could actually form the pizza dough by throwing it italiean style without any issuse.

In the long run however increasing the water content will be key to perfection.

Ingredients

• 150g fine spelt flour
• 850g all purpose wheat flour
• 20g salt
• 30g fine spelt flour sourdough starter
• 600g water (though should be higher next time!)

Instructions

Mix everything together until the water and flour is combined. Let that rest for half an hour.

Note: I added the sourdough directly, before the autolyse. With that low amount it does not really matter imho.

Then knead it until a nice dough forms. Let it rest for a whole day at 18-20 degrees covered. Do a set of stretch and foulds after 12 hours.

If you have time, do another stretch and fould the next day (after 24h rest) and let it rest for one hour before shaping. If you do not have time, shape directly.

Baguette

I tried to bake the baguettes two ways, one in the Dutch oven, one between two normal trays in the oven. For both options I baked them in a preheated oven at 250 degrees for 15 minutes and uncovered for another 10 at 230 degrees.

The results in the Dutch oven were amazing, the normal tray technique did not work for me. Maybe with some ice cubes added to the bottom of the stove to get the required humidity the first 15 minutes.

Pizza

I formed the doughlings when I shaped the baguettes (after 24h rest). I kept them in the fridge over night and let them warm up 4h before making pizza. This worked well, though the dough was pretty hard to work with at the beginning. It was super stretchy, though just a bit too hard.

A bit more hydration would also help the oven spring. The dough was nice, but burned pretty easy due to the low hydradion. Though it could use a bit more time for full crispyness. The dough felt a bit ‘chewy’, it was through and it did not stick, but could have used just bit more oven time.

Next Time…

• increase hydration to 63%