I started my sourdough starter nearly two weeks ago, and the week between making the starter and making the bread made me really impatient!
I love sourdough bread, it keeps really well and has a really distinctive taste.
I used the recipe from River Cottage to make my bread, using 100ml of my starter (which I fed again once I had taken some out for bread). You have to make a 'sponge' first and leave it to ferment overnight. This bit is a bit nerve wracking first time because it is then if you find out if your starter will ferment - luckily the morning after I was greeted with a nice bubbly bowl of sponge.
Once worked into a dough and proved all day it baked to a lovely big loaf. I think the only mistake I made was getting a bit carried away with making sure I had a nice crisp crust. I poured water into the tray a few times during cooking so the crust was really thick, not so great the day after, but good straight out the oven.
Next time I will fill up one tray of water and leave it at that.
I am looking forward to making some more bread next week. I have also seen a recipe for sourdough pancakes which sounds interesting!
I made a simple tomato soup to go with our sourdough which I topped with cheese and grilled. Yum!
Looks brilliant! I've never, ever managed to raise a sourdough starter to bubbly fruition and I'm very jealous; well done!
ReplyDeletemum gave me some tips on meringues, which I blogged here http://goblinfblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-meringues.html
ReplyDeleteno idea if it'll help but mum never gets chewy insides or tops....
toot
I know what you mean about getting too excited over bread success, I am known to jump up and down quite a lot when a loaf comes out of the oven!
ReplyDeleteThis looks great, I need to find time to try making sourdough bread myself...
Looks good, bread is brilliant fresh out the oven.
ReplyDeleteIf I print this out and leave it lying around the house, do you think I could persuade my bread-baking housemate to make me some?