Wild yeast that is.
I've wanted to make sourdough bread for a long time. I love sourdough. The REAL thing that is. A lot of what you buy in the stores isn't really sourdough but more like sourdough flavored bread.
I found this web site and felt inspired. Especially since I have access to a lot of locally stone ground flour which seems to be the key ingredient for making your starter. I was thrilled when my starter took off in one day! I did run into a problem with it being very active but not doubling in volume. On a guess I added more flour without any water. That was the trick. Now it had enough body to double instead of being soupy. I emailed the web site author and he confirmed my tactic. He also told me a needed to switch over to regular flour now that it was a growing starter. When I have some money I'll be making a donation in thanks.
So today was bread day! Everything went very well except I had no idea how time intensive this was going to be. I'm disappointed I never got to the gym but I was able to get some cleaning in in between the four or five rises needed. All things considered, it came out well. It had a nice pleasant but light sour taste. Could be more sour for my tastes. The crust was way too dark and crunchy for me. My fault I'm pretty sure. As usual, I just can't follow directions verbatim. Maybe that has something to do with my "has issues with authority."* Instead of making two boules, French for rounds, I decided to make two loaves in loaf pans. My guess is that with the loaf pans I need to bake at a lower temperature. Oh well, I'll just take another week to grow some yeasties and try it again.
*From my management psych evaluation when I worked in SC.
11 years ago
