发得够够

when i made bread previously, my mother always said 它发不够. that is, the dough didn't rest/proof for long enough. today, while making the nigella sourdough again, i think i produced a very good loaf.

her recipe produces one big loaf, but my oven can't take a loaf that size, so i always halve the dough and make two loaves. i discovered that the trick to getting this sourdough right is to make sure that the skin is formed after cutting and shaping.

not that easy to do, because this dough is highly sticky. but once in a while your fingers will come across a part of the dough that is smooth and slightly dry, that doesn't stick to your fingers. the key is to pull this taut skin to cover the entire loaf, and not make it tear.

today, i managed to do that with one of the loaves, though the other one was quite bad. so while i baked the bad one, i let the good one proof for almost two hours (not sure if i should let it go for so long), and it just grew and grew. just see the photos of it growing from a shaped dough into a baked loaf.
the one behind is the bad loaf, and you can see it is much smaller than the good one. and you would think that the big laof is heavy, and you would be wrong. i thought so too, but when i lifted it up, it was surprising very, very, light - the inside must be very airy!

就是发得够够了。

my sister is back from australia, with - no doubt - nougats.