Lockdown loaf take two

Sainsbury's finally had more bread flour in stock the last time I went shopping, so I can take advantage of the bank holiday and bake some more bread! I'm keeping it pretty simple still, but I'm going to try adding one extra step that I've been meaning to experiment with for a while, but never quite got around to - a short autolyse before forming the complete dough. We'll see how this turns out!

Lockdown Loaf Take Two
Ingredients
100g Aage
750g Strong white flour
400g Water
13g Salt

Method

1. Mix Aage, 100ml flour and water together, cover and leave in a warm place for ~3 hours. (12pm)
2. Mix 500g of the flour with 300ml water in a separate bowl, mix, cover and leave for a further two and a half hours. (3pm)
3. Combine the mixtures from steps 1 and 2 with the salt and knead with the dough hook attachment of a stand mixer for ~10 minutes (I'm feeling lazy, okay?). (5:30pm)
4. Cover and leave to rise for ~four and a half hours.
5. Realise that your dough is closer to liquid than solid and panic a bit. Add a further 150g flour and knead - first in the stand mixer, then by hand. (10pm)
6. Cover and place in fridge to prove overnight.
7. Preheat oven to max with Dutch oven inside. (9am)
8. Pour* dough out onto baking parchment and transfer to Dutch oven.
9. Bake at 220C for 20 minutes.
10. Uncover and bake at 180C for a further 30 minutes.

*Yes, "pour" - the dough was still halfway between solid and liquid at this point, and there was clearly no possibility of trying to shape it in any meaningful way...

So it was clear pretty early on that this one went a bit awry! The autolyse clearly did something, but in doing so, the dough just generally felt weird to me. I suspect that what happened was that the gluten developed much faster than I expected, and I accidentally made a very wet dough that didn't feel that wet - though I'm not sure that the measurements bear that theory out. In essence, I don't know exactly what happened this time around, but I did end up with a shear-thickening dough that would flow like a liquid, but stiffened up on kneading.

But look at the result! Don't try to tell me that that's not a beautiful loaf!

And how is it on the inside, I hear you ask. Well, not my best ever loaf, but not bad overall! I need to learn to keep my nerve and give it longer in the oven - it's a bit doughy and stodgy in the middle still, which I'm pretty sure another 15 minutes would have sorted out. But the crust has a lovely texture, the rise is actually not bad and the texture is lovely and elastic. A little more drying out and this would have been really lovely. As it is, it's just really good!