Ancienne Sourdough

After a bit of grief yesterday with some pizzas I made, which came out looking and tasting worse than some shop-bought dross, I was feeling a bit unhappy with the oven we've just got. The baking stone clearly just wasn't getting hot enough to crisp the pizza base and cause the water in the dough to evaporate quickly enough. Resulting pizza base was therefore awful.

So when I set about baking the sourdough bread I'd prepared yesterday (and fridged overnight to develop the flavour), I was concerned over how to avoid the same problem. Anyway, long story short, whacking the stone under the grill in the top oven, having warmed it already, meant I could get enough thermal energy into it, so that putting the stone into the main oven and immediately placing the shaped dough onto it, there was plenty enough heat to drive the bread upwards in a glorious example of oven spring: as the stone heat subsided the oven itself continued to cook the bread in a less direct way, meaning the crust formed nicely and the bread cooked through as it should.

Anyway, I've given it the label 'sourdough ancienne' cos I dunno what the right name should be. Bottom line, I'm happy with the outcome and no longer thinking about taking an axe to the new oven... ;-)