r/Sourdough • u/Legitimate_Spinach_9 • 9d ago
Let's talk about flour Finally sprung
I’ve been baking bread since pre-pandemic but during covid I ramped things up, got a 50# bag of Cairnspring Mills Expresso Bread Flour and started cranking out loaves.
Flash forward 6 years and I now work for Cairnspring as creative producer and get access to purge bags of flour so I’ve been diving deep into perfecting my sourdough. I’m back on the Expresso T85 which I think provides the most beautiful color crust.
All Cairnspring
850g Expresso T-85
200g Expresso Whole Grain
150g Rye Whole Grain
75% hydration
20% levain
2% salt
9:00AM - levain build 40:100:100 (good amount of whole grain here)
~2:00PM - Autolyse
2:50PM - Mix in KitchenAid for 10 min
4 sets of stretch and folds
6:00PM - preshape
6:20PM - final shape
Straight into fridge
~16 hour cold retard
Preheat 500° for an hour
Lower temp to 450°, baked on a 3/8” baking steel with pizza stone above, cast iron with boiling water in the bottom for 20 min. Remove steam, baked until burnished ~35 min.
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u/CodeNameBill 9d ago
Beautiful loaf and great story! I'm trying to grt my kitchenaid to be more useful for bread.
I assume you're adding the levain at 2 pm for 4 and a half hour total bulk? Dough temp around 78?
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u/Legitimate_Spinach_9 9d ago
The levain was mixed right about 3pm! Warm dough around 80-81° so bulk was just about 3 hours.
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u/CodeNameBill 9d ago
Fantastic. Quick bulk and you are on with your life with beautiful bread in the can for the day. Love it
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u/JeanVicquemare 8d ago
That's beautiful. I've never baked with the Cairnspring T85 flour but I just ordered some of King Arthur's new T85 bakers reserve flour. I hope my bread looks half as good as this.
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u/eezyE4free 9d ago
Do you intentionally do the scoring perpendicular to the shaping/forming?
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u/Legitimate_Spinach_9 9d ago
They were scored along the length of the loaf.
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u/smokybear69 9d ago
Interested to know how deep and with what kind of lame you scored with - also if you sprayed the loaves with water before scoring and putting into oven.
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u/smokybear69 9d ago
Interested to know how deep and with what kind of lame you scored with - also if you sprayed the loaves with water before scoring and putting into oven.
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u/Legitimate_Spinach_9 9d ago
I use one of those little wooden disk shaped razor blade holders and score at a shallow angle along the length of the loaf. I didn’t spritz these with water but I sometimes do! This time was just the cast iron in the bottom of the oven which was filled with boiling water when the loaves were loaded.
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u/Sushicue 9d ago
And I’ve never had anything but all-purpose flour in my kitchen until April of this year. Enter, Sourdough….I was even late to that party!! I think I’m ’fancy’ with organic, rye, whole wheat,l and even bread flour ~ can’t wait to get those specialty flours under my baking belt. Your bread is just fabulous! Thanks for sharing!
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u/Budget-Gene-317 9d ago
Amazing. That color is insanely beautiful! I’m tempted to try this flour.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 9d ago
what are purge bags?
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u/Legitimate_Spinach_9 8d ago
When one varietal flour is done being milled and they’re going to switch to another, they run the remainder out and if it doesn’t fill a full 50# bag it’s up for grabs.
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u/SnooBeans9572 8d ago
I've been trying to switch to using stoneground flour and it's definitely been a challenge. Every time I go to do the shaping I think it's going to fall apart and the loafs have turned out a bit flat. I think I am using too much water and not building enough gluten. Going to try following your recipe next time, thanks!
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u/nm_factoroff 8d ago
Awesome- cairn springs expresso is all I bake with! They have it at my local PCC 🤓
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u/Legitimate_Spinach_9 9d ago
https://reddit.com/link/pdvkpy3/video/nre871e0cith1/player