Baking bread is always like Christmas morning for me. You can't go wrong with a beautiful rustic country loaf of sourdough. While it's something slower than instant gratification, it's a relatively quick process in contrast to other disciplines, which can take quite some time to see the result of your handiwork. This batch was made over about two and a half days. I took it out the starter from the refrigerator on Friday, fed it twice, put together the dough, and did a long slow ferment from 5 a.m. to 3 a.m. the next morning. Then, time for the two shapings, a final proof, and bake time. This batch takes about a thousand grams of flour, and makes two beautiful round loaves. Both loaves went through the same shaping, but one split during the final proof, and with scoring the loaf it simply did not have the structure to make a big beautiful oven spring. The second loaf, the one you are looking at, sprang wonderfully and I can't wait to take a look at that crumb. With both loaves I am sure they will be consumed regardless of the state of the oven spring.