Canada Day bake

So the second loaf of the pain au levain has been sitting in the fridge for...about 27 hours now. Time to bake!

The oven was on at 300c for about 2 hours (we'd just finished having roasted goose breast for dinner). I cranked it up to 44oc, took the dough out from the fridge, did the normal routine: slash, spray and steam, then put it right into the oven (yes, straight from fridge to oven). In order to make sure that it will still get a decent overspring in the oven, I covered the loaf with a large stainless steel bowl for the first 20 minutes.

Many people praise how wonderful the overspring is when the dough was covered during the first xx minutes of baking. I never really bother doing it. Since the author of the bread states that retarding the dough will affect overspring, I got a bit worried. So time to use this little trick.

The bread rose nicely, with beautiful blister all over.

Next, I increased the oven temperature to 475C, and got ready for my sourdough bagel bake. This recipe is based on Reinhart's Crust and Crumb. I only made two changes:
1. I added 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast to compensate for the 0.8oz starter (recipe calls for 8oz starter but I only got 7.2oz);
2. retarded in the fridge for only 5 hours instead of overnight

Though the amount of yeast is tiny, I can definitely small the yeasty scent from the bagel :(

The bagels were overproofed a bit. Though I was on schedule, the addition of this small amount of yeast did mess up the activity of the dough. When I boiled the bagels, they floated right up. Fortunately, the finished products came out beautifully (I baked them for 15 minutes instead of 12 minutes)

I have a feeling that the texture will be more like a sandwich bun than a bagel. But that's all right, these are yummy artisan bake and I'll savour them one after after!