white sandwich loaf

Today was a perfect day to try my hands at baking bread. Perfect in the sense that my room temperature was exactly the recommended temperature for the dough, which eliminated a big variable and made my life so much easier. I followed abreaducation, one of the resources recommended over at /r/Breadit (I chuckled at the name). Very unfortunate that abreaducation doesn't seem to have any more lessons beyond the whole wheat sandwich loaf, the lessons are very detailed and easy to follow. Also sad that Canada has no easy access to King Author flour, which is go-to brand I see everywhere.

For my first loaf, I followed the lesson pretty much word for word. My time / temperature log in case anyone wants to compare:

Step	Temp (F)	Time
Fold 1	81	1:15 PM
Fold 2	80	1:20 PM
Fold 3	79	1:25 PM
End of bulk	80	2:17 PM
End of pre-shape	76	2:57 PM
Start of baking	79	4:21 PM
End of baking	205	5:01 PM

My folds in general were fairly ugly, as in quite squarish and not very round. I guess this will only get better with more practice. Pre-shaping was alright, slightly difficult to do on a bamboo chopping board (ahem this is definitely not an excuse to buy a marble slab, oh wait my parents already did! I'd also very much appreciate having a plastic and metal bench scrapper).

Before and after baking:

I was overly scared of over proofing my bread, but I think the final density implies that I should've let it proof for maybe 5 to 10 minutes more? I'll have a better idea tomorrow once I'm slicing a completely cooled loaf, got my jagged edges since I was impatient :(

Butter'd up and spread with some cardamon raspberry (chia) jam:

Next steps are to practice this some more and find a longer fermented bread so I don't use an obscene amount of yeast. My jar says to use within 6 month, and I finally see how that's achievable by baking like this.