So, bread…I love it, but it doesn’t love me. I try, over and over, to make a decent loaf of bread, even one on par with something I buy in the store, and it never quite works out. My focaccia’s a flop, my baguettes are a bust, and plop in any other alliterative phrase you want, it just doesn’t happen. So when I saw this:
Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!
I was a little, how shall I put it delicately, anxious. I had visions of bowls of goo bubbling over and invading the kitchen, or worse, just sitting there, doing nothing, for days on end, until I threw up my hands in frustration and brought in a stunt loaf from a local bakery…
But it turns out, despite all my fears, that sourdough, including the starter that both flavors and leavens it, is within my reach. Of course, it didn’t go perfectly, as these things seldom do, but I did learn that with patience and some extra time, decent sourdough can be produced in my kitchen.
Of course, the most important, some would say critical, part of sourdough starter production is naming your starter, which starts as an innocuous blob of whole wheat flour and water, and eventually, if you’re lucky, turns into a fragrant, bubbly pool of gooey dough ready to eat and burp it’s way to the dinner table in the form of a lovely loaf of bread. I decided to go with Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All. A nice, unassuming name, I thought. I figured any name that came from a show as cool as Doctor Who could do nothing but make this starter better…
In the beginning, there was this:
And after 4 days of adding flour, water, and stirring, there was still not a whole lot else. I started to despair, but figured that since my kitchen was the same temperature as parts of the arctic tundra, I’d give it some more time. And on the 8th day, I finally had bubbles! Teeny, tiny, beautiful bubbles of yeasty goodness. I was so excited! And when I fed the starter that day, I got MORE bubbles! And condensation on the lid of the container! So I knew I was finally ready add my starter to some more flour, water, and salt, pull together some dough, and bake myself a loaf of sourdough! The dough was pretty sticky, but I was good, and didn’t add any extra flour. I did sacrifice a cotton pillow case to the baking gods in the name of a proofing basket, and I opted to use white flour to stop if from sticking rather than the whole wheat the recipe specified, but otherwise I followed the directions pretty much to the tee. When the bread came out of the oven and was fully cool, I cut into it. And it looked GOOD! Didn’t rise as much as I’d hoped, but the texture and flavor were definitely there. My photographic proof:
Clearly NOT a stunt loaf from a bakery, I’m pretty sure no self respecting baker would pass a loaf this homely off as sellable, but it did taste good, so I say no harm, no foul. And since my Dad requested spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, I used a couple of slices of my bread to make open faced sourdough garlic meatball sandwiches.
I can’t wait to play around with some more recipes using the rest of my leftover starter. Maybe pancakes, or english muffins, or waffles…the list goes on and on. I can’t wait to check out what adventures the rest of the Daring Bakers had with their sourdough bread! And thanks so much to Jessica for coming up with such a great challenge and providing such wonderful step by step directions. They helped turn this bread baking failure into a rousing success!
