Variations

I have repeated my previous recipe a couple of times but with some variations. The first was to bake it at 200C for 40 minutes with the last 10 of those out of the tin. This was very similar to the previous except the crust was not as brown.

The other was to omit the sour cream and to increase the water to 465g. This rose a bit more in the fridge overnight and then again during the day. However, the rise in the tin, while OK, was not nearly as spectacular as with the sour cream. It seems as if the sour cream is not doing so much in the fridge and then putting in lots of effort in the tin. This was also baked at 200C. You can't tell from the photo but I am concerned that this may have a flying crust.

More sour cream

I added sour cream to one of my normal recipes:

400g wholemeal strong flour
300g white strong flour
125g sour cream
340g (approx) warm water
10g light brown sugar
7g dry yeast
10g salt

I mixed the sour cream, water, sugar, yeast and salt together first and then added the flour. I adjusted the exact amount of water to get the dough to the right consistency. I kneaded it in the normal way for 10 minutes or so.

The overnight rise was ok but not amazing, although the fridge does seem to be colder at the moment (2C instead of 4C). I knocked it down and put it back. The following evening it didn't seem to have risen much so I was not too hopeful.

I left the bread to rise in the loaf tin for longer than normal - about 2 hours at 30C followed by 1 hour at room temperature. The bread rose spectacularly in this time. I was worried it may have over proved.

In the oven at 260C with steam for 10 minutes there was no oven spring - in fact it shrank a little. The top was quite brown so it was down to 200C for 15 minutes plus 5 more out of the tin.

The loaf is a day old and the crust has shrunk a little. It is now much softer than when baked - it is not burnt

No flying crust, despite my fears

A lovely crumb - very soft

Sour cream sandwich bread

I made Dan Lepard's Sour cream sandwich bread and it rose nicely with some oven spring although still not a huge amount. Even though the recipe uses 550g flour compared to my normal 700g it ended up taller than my loaf recipe although using 100% white flour must help. The sour cream may be the secret ingredient though and I will have to try adding it to my bread to see if it helps.