cgTemplar

So, I made my best bread yet but I'm not sure what part of the process made it so good. I'll start with the recipe and explain the process because below it's puzzling me.

Poolish one 120g water 120g whole wheat rye Pinch of dry yeast Left for 18 hours

Poolish two 120g water 120g caputo 00 pizza flour Pinch of dry yeast Left for 4 hours

Rest 210g caputo 00 pizza flour 120g water 2g dry yeast 10g salt

Why two poolishes? Because I overestimated the time it would take the first one and it had started shrinking by the time I had another look at it. A poolish is supposed to take up to 24h as far as I know, but it looks like it exhausted its energy through the night. So I pushed my schedule by 4 hours and took the time to make another poolish with the bread flour.

Then I used my regular process. Mixing it all. Leaving it 5 minutes to absorb all the water. Kneading 7-8 minutes. Waited 45 minutes before starting the folds (3 sets, spaced by 30 minutes) where I noticed the dough was more elastic than I was used to. Waited 2 hours covered at room temperature (22°C 72F) then another hour in the fridge. After shaping it's taken about 45 minutes for the dough to be ready (judging by the spring back test, the amount of bubbles and how much it had grown). I scored with a knife that I had sharpened a few days before, so the scores were super nice. I bake with a medium sized dutch oven at 250C (480F). Oven spring was great. Baked for 20 minutes, removed the lid for 10 more (and turned it around halfway) with the oven slightly open at 240C (460F), then let it 10 more with the oven off.

This is my best bread yet, it's still crispy two days later, it looks amazing, but I'm not sure why :D

What's different from my usual process:

• The two poolishes
• I usually ferment only in the fridge, for around 3 hours, not at room temp.
• The knife was ultra sharp so the scoring was very smooth.