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Houston, we have bacteria!

The latest batch of baguettes smells sour to me. The flavor is mild, but even so it’s as strong as my old raisin starter ever was, even after I’d let the barm go for 3 days so the acids built up (although, in truth, the pH never dropped below 4, so it can’t have been too bad).

The new loaves continue to have the crackly crust and irregular, open, chewy crumb as the first two batches. Is this a trend, or just an early end to the flavor-building process ?

I reread Monica Spiller’s barm-bread recipe and was reminded that high-acid doughs can create loaves of diminished aspect. That is, the acids soften the gluten so much that the bread doesn’t rise as it should. I don’t see evidence of that here, although I admit my loaves aren’t as tall as I’d like, in general.

The obvious answer to that question is to use higher-gluten flour, but the tradeoff there is bread that gets completely hard after a day, like, I don’t know, dessicated shoe soles, or something.

Of course if you bake bread nearly every day anyway, your definition of “stale” begins to be a little different than most.