Jim Willis

Jim,

I can tell you what things I’ve done that have made a huge difference for me.

First off, I take my mother/barm/starter out of the fridge in the morning and let it warm up. At noonish, I feed it. The way I’ve worked it out, I keep ~7oz of barm, then add 7oz of bread flour and 7oz of water to make a nice pasty mixture. Around 8 or 9PM, it’s about doubled in volume to a very puffy, bubbly mass. I take out what I need for my 2nd stage, leaving 7oz to go back in the fridge.

The 2nd stage rises overnight. Around 7AM the next morning, I start my autolyse stage. This is one of the critical improvements in my bread building, I found. I mix just the flour and water (and buttermilk!) for the last (3rd) stage and let it sit for 45 minutes to an hour. I shoot for a very loose mixture, wetter than you’d probably think. Not like batter, but not firm at all. Also, make sure you’re shooting for a dough temperature in the 70s — so use warm water in the winter, cool water in the summer. (Hamelman has a nice formula for getting this right.)

Then I add my salt and the 2nd stage starter, mix about 4 minutes, then on to bulk fermentation. The other critical improvement I learned here from Hamelman’s Bread book about folding. At 2 50-minute intervals, I take the dough and fold it 4 times on itself. The bulk fermentation lasts a total of 150 minutes (3 50-minute sections), then I divide and scale.

I also think Hamelman’s suggestions on how to properly form the final shape help create a lot more rise, but that wasn’t at critical to me as the autolyse and folding. Steaming when the dough initially goes into the oven also helps, I think, but may not be so critical to rise as it is to getting a nice crust.

HTH,

ky