I must say my sourdough experience has been quite the journey. It started (no pun intended) just a few short weeks ago when I began my own starter (thanks to PJH's great blog post). Being my first time having anything to do with sourdough the first few days were terrifying ("Ewww, why does it smell like THAT?") but eventually after about 8 days the starter was doing quite well. It smelled wonderfully yeasty to boot. When it came time to make this bread I, stubbornly, tried to work it into a weekday schedule I was so excited! I made the overnight starter late last night, and all seemed great. This afternoon I added the flour (I added KAF Unbleached Bread Flour instead of AP for the second flouring), salt, and sugar and was ready to knead. It was quite stiff, probably because of the bread flour, so I added some water after trying desperately to get it to work out the way it was. The water helped but made the dough seem very sticky, despite it looking stiffer still than the photos. I left the dough as it was and didn't add any more water. I left it to rest in the bowl for about 3 hours and saw a modest at best rise or "puffiness". Being impatient as I am, I turned the dough out onto parchment and shaped it into one long, rather large loaf (it didn't seem like that much dough to me, until it spread). When the shaped proofing came around I was quite worried to see almost no vertical rise. The dough spread out significantly but never rose above maybe 1.5". I stuck it in the 425 oven anyways and BAM! Oven spring galore! I was amazed to see the loaf pop up to a reasonable size. It's still in the oven right now, and is browning beautifully. I may update later. Thanks for the amazing recipe! Even me, the beginner, can bake sourdough!

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