Sourdough Baguettes

I'm having a go at sourdough again. It's a funny thing - something that seems a little scary, looks a little weird and smells quite strong. But it makes amazing bread, like nothing you can buy (except from lovely bakeries) and it feels like such an achievement to make yourself.

I made my own starter a few years ago but it didn't go so well, it came out smelling a bit like paint and the bread I made also had a very chemical taste. Fellow Cambridge food blogger Ivana offered up some sourdough on Twitter so I thought it was about time to have another go - plus maybe an already active and healthy starter was the way to go this time.

This starter is very low maintenance, it stayed in it's jar for a good 5 days before I started to prepare it for baking - I think you can leave it along for up to a week between feeds. It becomes more of a pet when you are preparing for a bake, requiring a feed every 12 hours.

For the actual dough it takes about a day of going in and out of the kitchen to knead, rest, knead again, prove etc. Ivana gave me a Hilary Cacchia recipe which I'm not sure if I am allowed to reproduce but this Dan Lepard recipe looks similar. I used 150g starter, 225 very strong white bread flour, 5g salt and 100ml room temperature water.

It's then a case of kneading for a few minutes, leaving for 30 minutes. Then a process of kneading for 20 seconds, leaving for 10, then repeating 3 times. Then leave to double in size. Then dividing the dough, leaving for 15, shaping into baguettes and placing on the baking tray. Leaving to double in size. Then bake for about 15 minutes in a hot oven til golden.

I think the crumb could have been a little more 'open' but overall the bread was fantastic. A beautiful crispy top and soft fluffy interior. I sliced them lengthways and we had them simply with fried garlic mushrooms and a little parmesan on top.

I've still got plenty of starter left, sitting happily in my fridge, so hopefully there will be more recipes coming here soon! Watch this space :)

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Herman Friendship Cake

If you google Herman Friendship Cake it is basically all over the internet, there is even a whole website dedicated to it.  Basically it is a sweet sourdough starter used to make cake, you divide it into 5 portions - make a cake with 1 and distribute the rest to 4 lucky friends. I'd heard of it a while ago and a couple of weeks ago I got my hands on a bubbling pot of Herman starter from Vanessa.

I fed it with milk, sugar and flour, stirred it (not with a metal spoon, very important) and it stunk out the kitchen with yeasty smells for about a week. I've tried sourdough before, and whilst it was successful soon my starter started to smell of paint and it didn't make good bread anymore, so in the bin it went. Maybe my kitchen has the wrong atmosphere?

I wasn't intending on keeping this starter or passing it on as you are meant to (what can I say, I am greedy) - mainly because I'd never remember to feed this little floury pet every few days for the forseeable future. So about 1/3 went into a Herman friendship cake and the rest into a semi-sweet sourdough loaf (which actually didn't come out too well but let's not talk about that...).

I used this recipe here but substituted the oil for cooled melted butter, because you know, butter is better in a cake. I also added four chopped pink lady apples (and a few sliced up on the top) and a generous amount of vanilla extract. The resulting cake is very proper looking - homey, HUGE with a lovely crispy top. Had I had got around to making custard, I'd say it would be great with custard.

The cake has a yeasty taste which isn't as odd as it seems, to me it tastes a bit like a chelsea bun  - which is why I expect the original recipe contains raisins, I think some nuts would be great too.

I now kind of wish I'd saved the starter for more cake, I'll just have to make more friends with Hermans!

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