How would I tell if it is overproofed? Also, for rising perhaps the temperature was too high as I did his recommendation of turning on the oven briefly with a baking stone in it and then turning it off and putting the dough in there to ferment. I did not use rice flower, only bread flour, which was probably a mistake. I have used the stretch and fold methods previously, but again possibly not that well. I used bread flour instead of all-purpose as TBB says that gives it more structure - thoughts here? I did preheat for a long time - would you recommend baking it overall for a longer period.
Thanks so much!
It’s probably hard to overproof a sourdough, since the rising is so slow. Still, the time left for proofing should be only a guide and the condition of the dough should be the final arbiter. The normal measure is poking an indentation with your finger and seeing how quickly it fills back up. If it fills very slowly, the dough is proofed; if it doesn’t fill at all, it might be overproofed. Using the warm oven increases the possibility of overproofing. I’ve abandoned this technique in favor of adding warm water to the dough if I want to accelerate the proofing. Normally, I don’t, and wish to slow it down. Oh, let me also throw out the idea of underproofing. Is your sourdough culture strong?
But I didn’t mean to imply that overproofing was likely; I was suggesting that if you inadvertently deflated the dough, you might get similar results. After all, what is overproofing but dough deflation? Many people consider that rice flour is the best anti-stick substance that we can use, so its absence might have contributed to your sticking problem. I use plastic bannetons, so I don’t have experience using the floured kitchen towel technique.
As for color, if you Google on Tartine bread, I think you’ll see that the bread is very dark. The darker the bread, the more powerful the flavor.
BTW, I haven’t made the Tartine bread, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I just bought the book a couple of weeks ago and don’t have the right kind of Dutch oven to attempt it.