Last night - late last night - the first loaves made with my new starter came out of the oven.  I’d used the recipe for pain au levain from Jeffrey Hammelman’s “Bread” since it was written for stiff starter and is the classic sourdough.  As per the recipe, I started the final build about 12 hours before I intended to mix the dough, and followed the directions without trouble.  I remembered my previous sourdough attempts being far wetter than I’d know how to work with, but was heartened by the fact that the better part of a year spent with the wet no-knead bread would have me in good stead with this dough.

I needn’t have worried.  This dough mixes up much like a more traditional loaf - soft, supple, moist, but not nearly the insane wetness and nearly batter-like consistency of the no-kead or ciabatta.   So once it was mixed and set to rising, I waited the directed amount of time for the first folding.  At which point I noticed that there just wasn’t a whole lot of action going on.

I was concerned and decided to hold off on the second folding until I saw something going on.  Hours later, I decided that if I had a less active culture, it likely wouldn’t have the juice to sustain a fold, rise, punch, shape, proof - just too much rising in there for it to manage.  So, I decided to jump to the shape and proof phase.  After which I waited.  And waited.

Around 11:00pm, more than 12 hours after starting the dough, I decided that I was going to go for it, even though I wasn’t sure about the results.  And after pulling the loaves out of the oven, I was pleasantly surprised.  I haven’t tasted to taken pictures yet, but the loaves sprung up very nicely, and have a lovely sour aroma to them.  I’ll update with more info once I get my camera and do some tasting.

After that experience, I did a bit more research and found this recipe which tells a bit more about how this dough behaves and why I was expecting the wrong thing to happen.