Yeast Coast Lifestyle

This one turned out really nicely.  I used my super-active new sourdough culture, that I mentioned in last post-- cultivated as a sourdough starter for about a week, but then had some bottle dregs from a couple mixed-ferm beers added in.  Nice Brett character when it's at peak activity.  I can seriously feed this starter, then have it doubled in volume within a couple hours.  It's amazing! Anyway, so... the bread.  I have sort of stopped using explicit recipes in my baking, as I have the ratios memorized, and sort of know what to expect as far as time goes.  I've taken a liking to doing this short bulk ferment of about 4-5 hours, and a longer, cooler proofing in the fridge.  First of all, it' s a bit easier to manage a shorter bulk ferment, as far as my schedule goes, and then I can just pop it in the fridge for like 8-12 hours.  Secondly, some folks say that a longer slower ferment/proof will give you more complexity, as far as taste/smell goes...

Sooo sometimes you just want to bake bread, regardless of what time is, or what the schedule might entail.  So I did that.  I did some browsing in the Forkish book (I pretty much only go to that book now for inspiration), and used the 40% overnight wheat bread recipe for inspiration.  I used rye instead of wheat, and only used 20%, but followed it, as I felt it would translate alright.  I started at a weird hour, which caused me to have to shape my loaves at something dumb like 2am, but I was up late, so it was ok. Basically, I restarted my sourdough starter a week or so ago, and sort of cheated after a few days in.  I did the standard flour/water mixture in a mason jar for a few days, and fed it daily, with a moist paper towel elastic-banded across the top to keep it hydrated and filtered from anything falling in.  A few days later, I added a tiny bit of liquid from a mixed-ferm yeast starter I had going for beer, as well as some bottle dregs from a mixe...