Hey OP, great loaf, and great idea to bullet point the instructions. Kinda funny how the comments here differ in tone from /r/breadit so much :)
I hope it's ok if I give some unsolicited feedback:
One thing I've been trying out lately which has massively improved my loaves is diverging a bit from the Forkish recipes (which I'm sure are great when done properly, but I think there's a few things you can do to make it easier). You can see at the top middle of your crumbshot that there's a big gap, where it kind of fell down a bit. This is because at the point of cooking the dough didn't have quite enough strength.
There's a number of ways you can increase the strength, but I've found that folding is pretty useless IME with the flour that I've had. I've had some success with just 2-3 folds when I switched to a higher gluten flour (or just added some vital wheat gluten to my flour mix)... but I've found that a better strengthening technique before I do the folds has radically improved the strength of the gluten strands.
My favourite way is the Rubaud method (check out https://youtu.be/zgz0oAhgwyg?t=72) directly after the pincer and fold step, for about 5 minutes, followed by a few minutes break, then another 5 minutes. After that, you can leave off the later folds completely, or still do them to try and eek out the last bit of ovenspring.
Additionally, you can see that the loaf spread out a bit on baking. This is usually an issue of the shaping, which I had troubles with for soooo long after starting with FWSY. I found that this started to really improve when I added dough strength, but when I was starting out I was trying to duplicate what Forkish was doing and kept on failing. I think that https://youtu.be/ww78_SfGyQE?t=181 is a much easier tutorial to follow — but of course, if the dough doesn't have the strength then it'll continue to be difficult.
Anyway, happy baking. Best of luck finding good flours (and try out adding some wholemeal and rye to the mix stealing from the pain de campagne recipe, may be easier to find than plain white)!
Thanks very much! Yeah, I realised after Loaf #1 my folding technique needed to improve, and being a bit more energetic with the folds has given much better results (today's loaf! https://i.imgur.com/2WQYvcT.jpg). I'd never heard of the Rubaud method though, I'll try that out tomorrow!
I hope it's ok if I give some unsolicited feedback:
One thing I've been trying out lately which has massively improved my loaves is diverging a bit from the Forkish recipes (which I'm sure are great when done properly, but I think there's a few things you can do to make it easier). You can see at the top middle of your crumbshot that there's a big gap, where it kind of fell down a bit. This is because at the point of cooking the dough didn't have quite enough strength.
There's a number of ways you can increase the strength, but I've found that folding is pretty useless IME with the flour that I've had. I've had some success with just 2-3 folds when I switched to a higher gluten flour (or just added some vital wheat gluten to my flour mix)... but I've found that a better strengthening technique before I do the folds has radically improved the strength of the gluten strands.
My favourite way is the Rubaud method (check out https://youtu.be/zgz0oAhgwyg?t=72) directly after the pincer and fold step, for about 5 minutes, followed by a few minutes break, then another 5 minutes. After that, you can leave off the later folds completely, or still do them to try and eek out the last bit of ovenspring.
Additionally, you can see that the loaf spread out a bit on baking. This is usually an issue of the shaping, which I had troubles with for soooo long after starting with FWSY. I found that this started to really improve when I added dough strength, but when I was starting out I was trying to duplicate what Forkish was doing and kept on failing. I think that https://youtu.be/ww78_SfGyQE?t=181 is a much easier tutorial to follow — but of course, if the dough doesn't have the strength then it'll continue to be difficult.
Anyway, happy baking. Best of luck finding good flours (and try out adding some wholemeal and rye to the mix stealing from the pain de campagne recipe, may be easier to find than plain white)!