In which I form a monster so hideous that even I turn from him in disgust

[lisarea]

I got pretty good at the fancy sourdough boules, so I decided I should start working on making a regular sandwich style sourdough bread, like rectangular loaves with a tighter crumb and softer crust.

They're coming out pretty danged good now, so here is the recipe. Despite the fussy looking measurements, it's OK if you don't get them exactly right. That's just an artifact of me scaling things up and down until they work right and fit the loaf pans so it comes out in sandwich bread shape.

In the morning, make a levain out of:

40 grams sourdough starter
40 g. whole wheat flour
40 g. bread flour
80 grams water, about 70-something fahrenheit

Mix the ingredients, keep at 70-something F for about 5 or 6 hours, or until it's starting to get little bubbles in it.

Then, start your autolyse stage by combining:

1112 g. bread flour
165 g. whole wheat flour
74 g. rye flour (if you don't have rye flour, just add the equivalent weight of one of the other flours)
1000 g. 70-something F water
Optional: about 2 tsp. diastatic malt, if you have it. (It's pretty easy to make if you have some barley and a spice mill or mortar and pestle.)

Leave that set for about an hour or so.

Once that's done, add the levain to the rest, mix it in a little bit, then sprinkle about 27 g. salt and 50 g. water on top. If you're doing this with your hands, wash them thoroughly and don't dry, because it helps to have wet hands to keep it from sticking too much.

Leave this in at room temperature or a little warmer for about four hours, interrupting three times at roughly equal intervals to stretch and fold the dough. (Note that this is a much lower hydration dough, so it won't be nearly as flexible as that one.)

After that part's done, dump the dough onto a big cutting board and divide it into two equal parts. Do one final stretch and fold, and try to form them into sort of loaflike shapes. Leave these uncovered on your board for about half an hour.

Then, do a final shaping to get them as loaflike as you can, and transfer them to two loaf pans. Coat the tops with a bit of flour, put a clean lint-free towel on top, and then cover them in plastic if you can. Plastic grocery bags are good for this.

Leave them in your fridge overnight to about 18 hours, then test them to see when they're proofed by poking the top of the loaf. A fully proofed loaf will spring back mostly, but still leave a small indentation on top.

Heat your oven to 500F, then score the tops of the bread down the middle at a 45 degree angle. Put some water in a baking pan and put that on the lower rack to steam the bread. You might also want to brush the tops of the loaves with melted butter or cooking oil to keep them soft.

Put the bread in, lower the oven temperature to 450F, and bake for about an hour until it's done. It should sound hollow when you knock on it, and the inside temperature should be about 190F. I can never tell if something sounds hollow, so I usually check with the thermometer.