Back to Sourdough

Well, I couldn't stay away too long , could I?

This time I am documenting each step so that hopefully in time I will see what works best for me.

200g white leaven at 20C
325g water at 16C
500g organic all purpose flour
1.5ts Saxa table salt
room temperature 20C

1. Whisked leaven and water until comined.
2. Whisked in salt
3. Dumped all the flour in one go.
4. Mixed until roughly combined.
Leave 10min.

5. Knead 10sec on a lightly oiled surface. Cover with misxing bowl and leave 10min.
6. Repeat step 5
7. Repeat step 5
8. Knead for 10sec and place dough in lightly oiled bowl. Dough temperature 20C. Cover.
9. After an hour, deflate and round on a rye-flour dusted surface. Leave for as long as it takes to tidy up kids' toys and brush the cat (!) (about 15min). Dough temperature 20C
10. Round again. Place in a rye flour-dusted clay cooking pot. Cover and place in veg drawer of fridge. Time: 11:30pm

next morning...
8:30am The dough has expanded about twice it's size. Due to the size of the clay pot the dough has mainly expanded horizontally.
I put it in a cold oven and set the temperature to 250C.
30min later I check on the bread to find it has doubled vertically this time! Hurray!
I remove the lid and let it bake another 20min by which time the crust is quite dark and oddly very shiny and without a single crack.
I take it out of the oven and leave it to cool for about 4 hrs.
The top sounds very hollow when tapped. As I guessed, upon cutting the loaf open it appears the crust has 'ballooned' about 1/2in from the rest of the crumb.
The bread is delicious though, the crumb has reasonable size holes.
This method is very user-friendly for me.

I'm off to research about this crust...