Sourdough Bread

I made a batch of sourdough starter about 2 months ago. Everything went fine.

I took a while for me to get the hang of using the sourdough starter as a replacement for my normal rising agent which is dried yeast.

I found that it took about 20 to 22 hours for the dough to fully proove before baking. This is not a problem. All it means is that the baking requires more planning.

I made both white and brown loaves. The white was a fantastic product. It seemed like a cross between normal white bread (whatever that is) and Italian ciabatta. It was crusty and chewy with lots of big holes. Hmmmm....

The brown bread product was a different matter. I tried it with both strong brown flour and wholemeal flour. It was quite nice. It was light but not as light as the white. The extra density in the flour, produced a product that was much more crumbly but not crumbly in a good way. The texture of saw dust springs to mind, which I claim that I have never eaten.

The reception of these by the various patrons has been mixed. My brother and the Mater say it is Brillo Pads (Very Nice) where as the Lovely Noodles (My Wife), Pina Pina and Nead (My Daughters) would rather drink from a pox bottle (Not a good thing). I dont actually know what a pox bottle is but I feel that it would not be a very nice thing. My friend Whoolio also thinks it is Brillo and so do I.

I am not sure how long I will continue to go down the sourdough road. It is a bit of a hassle. The sourdough starter need to be looked after at least every 2 days.

I feel compelled (wrongly of course) to only bake sourdough bread. I can probably get therapy for that. I should probably mix the baking styles more, i.e. soda bread, normal yeast and sourdough. That should keep everyone happy, even me.

Feeding the starter makes the starter grow in volume quite a bit. I would say that I have about 2000 mils of the stuff. I am such a cheapskate I hate throwing good stuff out.

Anyway, it died and got washed down to the big sink.

Always good for the biomass of the drains.

Now back to soda bread and dried yeast (mostly) bread.