As good as my word, in search of the solution to my sticky dough issue, I made a loaf covering with a tea-towel throughout all the fermentation. The result was not good.

After rising overnight, the dough, which started off as a stiff 50% hydration, was once again like waffle batter, only stick...

This whole "sticky dough" episode of late has been nagging at me. Then I remembered, I had this problem once before. But did I write about it? I did!¹ That time, I didn’t think much more about it than plastic bag=condensation, because there were all sorts of other things going on with the dough....

It felt very strange putting the bread in the fridge to rise, but I had to get to the bottom of this new stickiness. The next morning it had indeed risen, quite a bit, but there was something odd and unexpected. A little rim of water around the edge of the dough. Ahah! Condensation!

I normally c...

Last week's very sticky dough prompted me to try something even worse this week. I made a 55% dough (not very wet, I know, but wetter than I started with last time) thinking that I could try the stretch and fold method of building structure. Disaster. Last night the mixture was bubbling away, look...

A sourdough, which had been doing its thing all night, looked just fine this morning. So I went to punch it down, generally a satisfactional kind of thing to do. It grabbed my knuckles and refused to let go. And this was a 50% dough, which should be reasonably stiff. Something -- most likely the hea...