Dustin Tigner

Dustin Tigner

@dustintigner.com

I'm having fun learning to make and bake delicious food! My current obsession is sourdough bread.

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Used my sourdough starter to make some pizza yesterday. The dough uses 00 flour and whole wheat. That first pizza was the best. Maple bacon. Never had anything like it before. Not even sure you can buy it (not in the way it was canned by a neighbor). Good stuff. :)

Baked up a loaf of jalapeño and cheddar sourdough bread, then made grilled cheese sandwiches with a side of homemade tomato soup. :) Used a bit of the jalapeño juice/brine when mixing the dough. Could smell it with every stretch and fold, haha. #breadsky

Big boy sourdough loaf (accidentally gave it 50g too much water and had to add flour, haha) turned out to make some of the most delicious BLTs I've had in my life. ~$7 for three sandwiches + chips. Eating out would have been $40+. Make great food at home. :)

Sourdough starter is alive and kicking! It took a while (rancid flour does not help...), and that's okay because the bread is delicious. I also made cookies (not with a starter, though I have seen people do that). It's going to be a very carb-heavy month, haha.

Made some rye sourdough bread in order to make a Reuben sandwich. My first Reuben. Woot! I didn't have nearly enough meat, haha. Rye is also hard to not make a condensed loaf. I'll keep working on it. :) #breadsky 🍽️

Grape jelly on pink sourdough bread, haha. I probably could use a lot more dragon fruit powder to get a deeper color. Either way, tasted the same, which means it tasted great. :) #breadsky

Made jalapeño and cheddar sourdough bread. It's kind of a pain trying to keep all the things inside the dough, but it makes for the best grilled cheese sandwiches! Fresh jalapeños. Next time, I'll try picked jalapeños. :) #breadsky 🍽️

I've been making sourdough bread every day for months now. This is my latest. :) I don't have anything amazing to post, so I've mostly just stopped posting. But maybe I don't need to post "amazing" things. I'm just sharing what I've baked. That's good enough. Hope you're baking awesome things!

Playing with food dye in sourdough, haha. Sadly, the color didn't turn out that great in the crumb. I'll keep playing until I have something worthy of sharing. ;) #breadsky

My first sourdough experiment with cheese and jalapeno inclusions. It smelled great this morning, haha. I like the crust a lot, but I think I need to use more ingredients next time. :) #breadsky

Two different updates! First image is showing my progress as a sourdough baker. I'm mostly experiming with shaping and timing, but all loaves are turning out good. Second image is my first attempt at including cheddar and jalapenos! I'll be baking this tomorrow. :) #breadsky

After weeks of baking bad sourdough bread—experimenting to the extreme—I think I've officially leveled up. This is master-level quality: light, airy, chewy, delicious. It's perfect to pull apart and dip into some cheesy soup. :) Also, I've now baked over 150 loaves! #breadsky 🍽️

Made six pizzas last night... While cleaning everything hours later, I found my sourdough in a bowl, proofing about five hours too long. >< Whoops! It looks like it turned out pretty decent, though. I'll report on the crumb once it has cooled. :) #breadsky

Here's the crumb shot for this sourdough loaf. I think it turned out quite well, which makes me wonder about how long we should bulk ferment our doughs. I sense more experiments coming. ;)

This week's new topping to try on my sourdough bread is creamy honey! I spent the last week experimenting... lots of failures. Back to my hand-mixed awesome bread for a few days. :) #breadsky

Woot! My first sourdough batard (which means bastard in French, haha) turned out perfectly. In fact, it almost looks like a boule based on how much it opened up. The loaf in the back is a boule. These were machine-mixed. :) Win win win win. ;) #breadsky 🍽️

Just a quick share of my new Challenger pan. This was my first time using it. The top (bowl) lid is sitting on my counter, still quite hot, haha. This thing can seriously retain heat. Showing a hand-mixed sourdough boule. Tomorrow's bread will be machine-mixed. #breadsky

Despite my lack of posting, I've been doing a lot of sourdough testing, mostly with using a stand mixer. Lots of failed attempts, haha. But I'm learning. First image: upped hydration and yeah... flat. The other loaf is what I baked today using my hand-mixed method. Lots more tests to do. #breadsky

Had friends over for board games and made them all sourdough loaves (Give the gift of bread!). Sadly, this left me without a banneton for my loaf this morning. But a smooth crust is kind of cool. :) #breadsky 🍽️

Pfft. Sourdough experiment #... something. 500°F pre-heat for 45 minutes. Lowered temperature to 450° when I put the bread in. 35 min with lid on. Lowered to 425° and baked 7 minutes with the lid off. Barely hit 200°. Much darker than my ideal. Less ear development. :( #breadsky

Another sourdough bread test! The left image shows a double-deep scoring line across the bread. I cut twice. The second bread had a shallow scoring line. (I, ummm, also forgot to set a timer for the second one. Then I forgot to lower the heat while browning, haha...) #breadsky

Sourdough crumb shots. The first image shows machine-mixed dough (gentle stir for two minutes). The second is hand-mixed dough. Everything else was the same. Machine-mixed was fuller/denser, needing to chew a lot more. This was only one experiment. I'll do more. :) #breadsky

Decided to try mixing sourdough with a mixer. The result? Even with a short and gentle stir, the crumb was much fuller and denser. Could be good for sandwiches, but I think I prefer my hand mixed sourdough bread instead. Maybe there's a middle ground? #breadsky

My breakfast normally consists of a high-protein yogurt, but since I've been baking a lot lately, I wanted to start making my breakfast. I didn't bake the bagel, but I'm interested in baking sourdough bagels. Sadly, this breakfast kills my energy, haha. Everything bagel + ham slices + egg. 🍽️

Tried to make focaccia. Not sure how well it turned out. I was expecting it to be more flat, so I'm confident I did something wrong. That said, it's pretty tasty. I could see it going well with a soup. :) #breadsky

This week's "jam" is Apple Butter. It's interesting. Kind of has a cinnamony flavor or tastes a bit like how hot apple cider smells. It reminds me of winter or Thanksgiving. Not bad. :) #breadsky

Sourdough temperature experiment. I actually hit 202°F, even if the lying probe is lying. Pfft. Heated the oven to 500°F, then put the dough into the Dutch oven. Lowered temp to 450°F for 35 minutes, lid off for 7 minutes at 425°F. Took a bit longer, but I'm happy with the results :) #breadsky

Sourdough crumb shot from my last bake. This is the center slice. At a lower temperature, you might find a thin line where the dough didn't quite get hot enough at the bottom. It looks pretty decent here, but the ends were quite holy (holey? 🙏) lol #breadsky

New sourdough temperature experiment. I put the dough in the Dutch oven as soon as the oven hit 450F. Turned the oven up to 500F for 35 minutes, then dropped it to 425F with the lid off for 7 minutes. This resulted in a darker crust but not a higher temperature. Alas, haha. #breadsky

Tell people you're a millennial without telling them you're a millennial... ;) Slices of avocado on homemade sourdough bread, buttered and toasted, with a dash of garlic salt. #breadsky 🍽️

Made pizza today with my sourdough and 00 flour. It was delicious! Much better than my last attempt, which wasn't bad. Image 1: Imagine this as pizza Image 2: Look at my lukewarm buns! Image 3: This took literally 5 seconds to shape; crazy Image 4: Butter and garlic on the crust = yum #breadsky 🍽️

When it comes to bread, everyone has opinions, haha. And everyone is right! The best bread is the bread you like. I like my sourdough bread to be quite light and soft, not dark. I've gone back to not waiting 45+ minutes for the Dutch oven to heat. I think my bread is better for it. (Image notes)

Here's a quick post of my latest sourdough bake. I tried to do a double batch and kind of screwed everything up. Did you know the blisters on sourdough come from doing a cold ferment? (There are a few other reasons, too.) I just learned that, haha. Anyway, I'll be eating this later. :)

First time making a levain. I usually just use the scraping method with my starter, feeding it only as much as needed for what I'm going to bake. This levain, though, uses 00 flour for pizza dough. I hope the jar isn't too small! #breadsky #sourdough

New week, new jam! Next week, I'm going to make my own jam. But this week, I picked up Sweet Honey Fig spread. Not sure how it will taste on my sourdough bread, or even if it's meant for bread, but I'm happy to give it a try. I'll report back once my bread has cooled enough to eat. :)