I had a batch of rye bread dough rising at the same time as the sourdough and I decided to bake the rye off first. For some reason, the rye bread took over 15 minutes longer than it should have, but it looked fine so I didn’t think much of it. Since I was feeling lazy, I decided to bake the sourdough in a lecreuset instead of on the baking stone. I preheated the pot for 30 minutes, then plopped the dough in and let it bake for 20 minutes. At the 20 minute mark I removed the lid to let the bread crisp up a bit more, expecting to see the usual golden lovely loaf inside. Imagine my dismay when what was there instead was a dense golden puddle.
Miss Clavel, something is not right.
I put my little oven thermometer on the rack and let it sit for 10 minutes in the oven. The oven was set for 450F but lo and behold, the thermometer wasn’t budging above 335 or so.
Ugh.
I tried to salvage the sourdough and managed to cut off a couple of slivers before calling it quits. I don’t think I’ve ever had to through out a loaf of bread before.
I started looking at new ranges but the whole thing is so overwhelming, as is the cost of getting someone out to look at it and possibly repair it. For now, it seems that the problem might have gone away. I’ve baked a couple of times since then and the oven appears to be back at it’s usual only-25-degrees-off, which is fine when I can count on that.

Since then, I haven’t re-fed my sourdough and that’s something I clearly need to remedy. Must try again!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 9:05 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.