The #CoVid19 #Lockdown situation has created lot of home bakers. The interest towards #Sourdough bread has surged in the last month. Having baked sourdough bread for close to 7 months, I will share some most common mistakes new home bakers do

The first mistake is the sourdough starter not being very active & healthy. Every new baker who starts from scratch will almost certainly misjudge early activity as a sign of starter ready to bake bread. With regular feeding, it might take two weeks to get a healthy starter.

A healthy starter will triple (or at least more than double) its volume at its peak. It will smell milky, lactic acid before peak. It will be fruity at peak and smell sour and vinegary when left long past the peak. The smell palate will be same for every refresh.

The second mistake is a continuation of first mistake. Once you have active and healthy starter, throwing it to fridge and not refreshing it back and bringing it back active & healthy before baking.

Since we don't bake on daily basis, it is common to put the starter in fridge to avoid feeding daily. But, the starter straight out of fridge is not ready to bake immediately. Give it at least 2 to 3 feedings to bring it back to life

The third mistake is under proofed dough leading to denser bread. This is again a continuation of previous mistakes. Using an unhealthy starter will not let the dough proof sufficiently in time, again leading to denser dull looking bread.

If the bread looks pale and doesn't rise its a sign the bread has not proofed enough

The fourth mistake is starting with a wrong blend of flour. Let the healthy blend of grains wait for later. First start with a high protein unbleached bread flour. Unbleached because the microbes need a healthy food. Bread flour because it is most tolerable to mistakes

The next mistake is going high hydration. For a first timer, it almost always leads to a flat pancake that is denser. High hydration is difficult to work for a beginner and predicting the fermentation is very difficult. Low hydration is most tolerable to mistakes

The last mistake is over-proofing the dough. After fixing all the above mistakes, you have a healthy starter, very active leaven, right flour & hydration. Now you let the dough double in volume and again produce a flat pancake that is denser.

In spite of all the mistakes, the bread will taste awesome. I can guarantee this. I have baked around 60 breads with all kind of mistakes you can imagine. And every single time, the bread tastes awesome. I don't know whats the magic.

I will continue to dive deep into the details of each step in future tweets. I was so far not tweeting anything but just using. Until I came across people like @krishashok @KitchenChemProf. Why not use twitter to share my cooking and baking experiences. Thank you for inspiring!