"Jungle" is what the guys, when we were teens, called anything that was just press on ahead without knowing where you were going. Proceedings with reckless abandon. I did that with a loaf of bread and now I want more!

Don't you just hate it when something irreproducible comes out perfectly?

I haven't been baking bread much this year for various reasons, and my starters have been neglected, so I set about feeding my beloved Wubby (100% hard red whole wheat starter) for a week. I also got out the white starter and transitioned it to bleached AP (it had been unbleached AP). My discard jar in the fridge was full, and I didn't want to start a new one, so discarded into an old (clean) pickle jar for convenience, to begin with, and then for all the discards to follow since it was so convenient and I hadn't done anything to better it.

I use starter discard a lot for waffles, but this wasn't waffle weather (i.e., no one wanted to eat waffles). I did need bread, so when my small pickle jar was full and started rising over the top, all unfed, I thought, okay, you can be bread.

Hey, presto!

Well, that didn't work. Magic incantations rarely do, but it doesn't hurt to try. I still wasn't in the mood to fuss, so just used the base recipe for my trust old whole grain bread, which didn't require making equations. The WW starter is 80% hydration. The white is 70%. I didn't measure the discard (in theory, 90g per feeding, but with evaporation, loss in transit, etc., who knows?) and just mixed them in the jar, though it was about 3-4 times more ww than white. That's close enough to the hydration for the recipe not to worry about it, and I had about half the weight of starter as of the flour and water called for, so I just went with it, and used the bleached white AP for the other half of the flour. All went together with the salt, yeast (1/2 tsp. as called for) and a little ascorbic acid, and into the fridge over night.

Taken out and set on the counter at about 10 a.m., it was risen and ready to proceed around dinnertime.

It was no surprise, however, that the AP had no legs at all--gluten will develop if it just sits, but while there was enough to hold the rise in the bowl, it turned to batter when turned out. I turned it out onto a pizza pan with a little flour to knead. I should have put it in the mixer with the dough hook, and added flour, to develop proper gluten. As it is, I only kneaded it enough to give it some elasticity, and didn't add any flour besides the half scoop from the kneading surface, though my hands were crying for more flour. I was trying to be true to the recipe. :) Then I slorped it into a loaf pan and put it in the warming drawer on low to see if I could speed up a rise. After an hour, it was starting to rise, but already developing a skin, and I was, frankly, getting tired of it, so threw it in the oven at 375° F for about 45 minutes.

Some oven spring. Yeah. Seemed done. It's hard to know with the AP rather than WG. It did crack on the sides because of the skin formed in the WD, but that made it easy to take its temperature. Perfect.

It smelled SO good! I was picking at it before it fully steamed out. Cool enough to wrap in Beeswrap before bed.

Tastes better than it smelled! SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOD!!! Just the perfect sourdough flavor, with more depth from the whole wheat content. Dense, moist sponge, from the high hydration and short shaped rise, combined with all that soft AP. Wonderful springy texture with a small holes, closed crumb with a few bubbles (weak gluten makes for big bubbles where the interstices break, which is something high hydration loaves are supposed to do).

I'm hoping telling you everything I did will help me figure out how to produce this on purpose, especially the flavor, though the crumb is also excellent. The crust is lightly crunchy and superflavorful without being "crusty". (I baked in a shiny loaf pan, no outside steam, so expected texture, but it was so perfectly perfect perfect...)