Although I promised to, I never did deal with the baking session that produced, as a byproduct, the Best. Pancakes. Evah. Probably because it was too awful to revisit. The dough -- supposedly 65% hydration -- had absolutely no structure.

Really, only a vague dread of wasting food persuaded me...

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I’d been looking forward to this evening all week. (How sad is that?) It was time to bake, or at least to prepare loaves to bake tomorrow morning. I’ll deal with that tomorrow morning, when the bread comes out of the oven for judgement. For now, lets just say that it was very scary. And it ain’t ove...

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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...

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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....

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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...

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