Saturday, March 21, 2009

And on the 7th day, there was Sourdough Bread...


This was Ronny's first attempt at baking bread with the starter I made. It's a weird looking bread but it had a lovely crust, tasted like a nice loaf of bread...and smelled great. Whatever the shortcomings of this bread - we were both amazed that we were able to make bread at all with the gooey stuff I kept in a bottle for a week, so I have to say this whole process has been a lot of fun.

I won't post this recipe because either we didn't do something right or the recipe itself has a flaw, but I'm not going to blame the yeast because I think they did their bit.

Over the next week, we'll be experimenting with baking sourdough bread a bit more, and if we manage to bake anything worth sharing with you, we'll post or link to the recipe we used.

Note: Only 75 g of starter was used to bake this bread. You know how you throw out half the starter before feeding it? Well, we poured all the stuff that was going to be thrown away into a bowl on my kitchen scale (making adjustments so that the the scale would read zero with the bowl on it) and then threw out all except 75 g.

7 comments:

Dorte said...

Why does it look weird? I think it looks delicious :-)
I think I read somewhere that the outcome also depends on the quality of the flour you use (the content of gluten, protein etc.) and of course the type (wheat, rye etc.)

Trish said...

Oh it looks good there! I think it looks like 'rustic' bread. And I am sure it tastes delicious! Good on you! There is nothing like fresh bread or buns filling your kitchen with that heavenly scent, right?! I just pulled out my two loaves of sourdough...I'll share it on my post tomorrow. It looks great...a little 'squat' though...grin, next time I'll put it in a different pan. I can't taste it though...being on a 'diet' I need my boys here...my taste testers and they are gone for the weekend but back tomorrow. Come on by and see then...I am so proud of you...that was such an interesting account you kept for us all to see....why...you should the be the chemist...not moi! grin. Have a great evening...or is it morning there?!

Dewi said...

I think your bread doesn't look weird at all. I wish i can see the crumb ...
Congratulation on your first sourdough bread.
Cheers,
elra

Murasaki Shikibu said...

Dorte: Thank you - you are too kind. And thanks for the tips. The dough was very very soft and felt like it needed to be inside a mold. Because we plopped it onto the hot tray without a mold - it just kind of spread out.

Trish: Smart girl! You put yours inside pans so they wouldn't sprawl all over the place! hehe

Elra: Thanks for your help & encouragement. :)

NKP said...

The bread looks great! That is the sign of a homemade loaf, they are far more interesting than the factory produced ones from the store.

Siri said...

I'm so proud of you!

Now that I'm back from our trip and have time to tend to a starter, I'll be making a sourdough loaf like this in 1-weeks time.

-Siri

Murasaki Shikibu said...

Natashya: Thanks :)

Siri: Will be looking forward to seeing your bread. :)