When I started to bake bread I had no idea how much science and technique is behind. I had a simple desire like: I would like to be able to make a beautiful and tasty bread myself.  In the last 6 years of my sourdough journey I've experienced a lot of failures but I have never thrown away a bread that I did myself. Of course, I made breads spreads completely in my oven, I made dense breads, I made not so good looking breads but all of them were perfectly eatable. What I love about baking bread is that you cannot fail. You might only have disappointments or extraordinary experiences. I've leaned a lot with every single bread I made. I've learned about flours of any type, I've learned to know my sourdough, I've learned to play with the environment to target specific improvements for baking wonderful loaves.
Baking great bread comes only with a journey. I doubt that there is somebody who made such bread with his/her first try. There is a lot of science behind to understand how each variable influence what and at which step. There is a lot of physics and chemistry behind. There is also mathematics behind calculating the proportions of ingredients. Am I just speaking of just our basic daily bread? Yes, it is exactly what I am speaking about.
My experience with bread started even before Maya (this is how my sourdough is called) appeared into my life.  I was making bread in a bread machine for some years already but there was something that pushed me to step further from this. Bread made in a breadmaker  was always the same. Same shape, same taste (or tasteless), same tons of crumbs on the table. On the other side it was very practical to thrown away all ingredients and come back after 4 hours to get out my warm bread. I remember that when I first time read that the bread can take 4 hours in the bread machine to be ready I thought that it was a huuuge amount of time. Now I do breads that are spread over couple of days only to get a specific flavor.
The sourdough journey was with up and downs in terms of look but always the result was an incredible tasty bread. And I don't know how, it fit even in my crazy weekly schedule. I didn't have much time for other things, but for bread, I was always making time.
Although in the last 6 years I baked bread almost weekly, at a certain moment in time I stopped photographing them as to me they were looking all the same. Great but not wow. Now with the lock down I had a desire to upgrade to a new level, to test different variables in my bread making to achieve a better looking. I've changed recipes, I've  changed flour sources, I've read dozens of blogs and watch hundreds of hours of instructions videos to find the secrets of an open crumb bread.
I've then made a plan: stick to one recipe that you trust, stick with the same flour and try small changes. And this is exactly what I did. I've made this recipe 4 times with the same ingredients and quantities and slightly modifying other variables.
I was watching others how they were handling the dough but mine was not looking like theirs. What I was doing wrong? It was a question that troubled me for days. Could their flour have being so different than the one I had access to? How was this possible? And then again, was it me handling something wrong?
First 3 trials were almost the same.  For the last one I changed couple of things.
First it was the autolyse. I've changed the one hour autolyse (with sourdough included) to 6 hours of autolyse of just flour and water. This in fact changed everything from the start to me, because the dough was behaving in an incredibly good way. For the first time I felt that my dough was looking as it should.
The second thing I've changed was the technique in the handling of the dough. I knew well my old good style but I wanted to change to something much better. This new handling improved so much the structure of my dough.
Third thing was the scoring of the loaves. With a good bread structure you need a deep scoring. Before I was scoring superficially at let's say 0.5cm, but now I discovered that a 1 to 2 cm scoring is delivering incredible results.
Putting these 3 together I reached to an incredible bread although there were the exact same ingredients and quantities as before. OMG, what a difference. I've made a complete description of this technique bellow. Just a little disclaimer, for me these were the improvement to get a gorgeous bread, to you might be others.
For me this bread put me on another level of my journey. Discovering these secrets is like raising the experience level from amateur to profesionist. The satisfaction to bake this bread was huge. I jumped for joy like a child telling, Yesss I did it! It worked! The other members of the family were looking weird to me, wondering if I lost my minds in this lock down period. Who didn't struggled with sourdough bread could not understand this joy.
This bread is not just about having an ear on top, is also about having an airy structure inside with gorgeous bubbles. It is the success of a long experience. It is for me like to highest level of baking bread. I just knocked on the door of this level and I hope that from now one I can experience even more incredibly good looking breads.
This recipe is to be made in 3 days if you have all ingredients available. But if you are like me and you keep a small amount of sourdough in the fridge you add 3 days more to have a enough and strong starter. I picked this recipe, from a blog that I admire very much (see at the end). I picked it also because it can be done anytime in the week, it is flexible and it fits perfectly the classic schedule of daily 9 to 5 worker. Before, I had to do my bread only on weekends, but this recipe is conceived to work on it only during the evening and it is giving you quite a big interval so you can fit it into your schedule. I made an example of the schedule in order to have the bread cooked for lunch on Sunday. But if you wish to bake it for Sunday evening there is no risk to have it over proofed.


Let's see the details of my best bread ever (so far) ...

Three years ago my life changed completely. More difficult and more beautiful in the same time.

To celebrate, of course, I could only bake a cake. I should have done a big party but the current lock-down situation doesn't allow me.

This cake as the last week one (also for another celebration), I've made it in 3 days. The Dark chocolate sour cherry festive cake of last week was heavy, in the sense that you couldn't eat too much and a small portion was more than enough. This is how I arrived with some chocolate cake slices in the fridge while starting a new one. This one, had to be on the opposite side. It should have been a light one and absolutely with strawberry. At least this was the desire of my daughter.
First day was the sponge. The more sponges I do, the more experience I get and I feel quite confortable making them. This was probably the best I've done this year. A new recipe (of course customized) but a great success. Although there was no top (as I learnt how to bake a nice flat sponge cake), I had to cut a top as my kids were asking to eat it. This is a nice irony of life, but then, I better keep my kids happy than targeting for the ever best cake of my life.
The strawberry sauce was a bit of a mess. I put it then in the fridge overnight hoping that the next day I'll do something to fix it. In fact, I followed a recipe that didn't turn at all the way it was described, so I corrected it myself by adding some gelatine. This costed me the next day half an hour more rest  (per each layer) in the fridge for the strawberry layer to harden.
The white cream was the most simple to do and there I was for the decoration. A total invention on the spot. I had in mind some strawberry cakes with nice patterns but I simply followed my instinct and it turned as you can see.
Being a light cake, it was eaten in less time than the cooking one. Not so sweet and with such a spring fruity flavor inspired by strawberries. Needless to say what a perfect taste it had... you'll have to try it to be convinced.

Happy Birthday, my sweet son!