Sourdough
I have a friend who’s been on a sourdough baking kick for the last few months but last week she decided she had to stop — she decided she was eating too much bread — and gave me all her supplies, including a starter, a big bag of bread flour, and various implements.
I’ve never done sourdough baking before, though in my shared house days I regularly made bread with fresh yeast that came in a block from the deli. No “instant yeast” back then.But after a while I got sick of slaving over the dough for most of the day — waiting for it to prove, then kneading it for ages, then more waiting, more kneading, more waiting and finally baking. And then the others in the house would arrive and all the bread was gone in a matter of minutes!
Fast forward quite a few years and for a while I got into “no-knead” bread making, and that was fun, and very easy. That’s one of mine in the photo below. But I was eating a lot of bread, and I was trying to lose weight, so I stopped. Because resisting the call of freshly baked bread is not in my skill-set!
I have flirted with the idea of sourdough for ages, mainly out of curiosity, but had no plans to start — again because I could see myself endlessly having to feed the starter to keep it alive and baking too much bread for my needs. And eating it, when I’m trying to watch my weight. Besides I always buy Edwards sourdough and freeze it.
But a combination of two things has set me on my present course — 1) I saw on-line that if you only wanted to bake once a month, you could keep the starter in the fridge until two days before you wanted to bake again. So I didn’t have to feed the starter all the time. Or bake bread all the time.
And 2) my friend (who was complaining that it made her eat too much bread!!) gave me her starter, a big bag of bread flour and some other bits and pieces, including a banneton (basket for proofing the bread) and a “bread lame” which is a fancy razor blade holder for slashing the dough before baking. (I prefer my multi-purpose razor-edge cutter.) And of course, i had to try it out.
The first loaf was okay; it didn’t rise very well — it’s cold here at the moment— but it tasted fine. So yesterday I mixed up another batch of dough and this time, I put it in the fridge overnight for the final proof, which people says improves the flavor. I’ve just baked it —that’s it cooling on the bench — and it’s been sitting there for an hour— the house smells fantastic—so I’m just about to cut it.
Verdict: not bad. It rose better (though still not as much as I’d like), the crust is nicely crunchy and it tastes good, but the holes in the bread are a bit big, so I’ll have to work out why that is. Thank goodness for the internet, which will tell me.
But I’m happy enough, and I’ve put the starter away in the fridge for another few weeks.
Have you ever baked bread? With fresh yeast, dried yeast, no-knead or sourdough? Or do you prefer to buy it from bakers who know what they’re doing. <g>
I think your sourdough loaf looks lovely and appetizing, Anne, and so does your no-knead loaf! And while I bake a lot, it’s never bread! After a couple of disasters many years ago, I have what a bread-baker friend calls “an unreasonable fear of yeast”. Cakes, pies, biscuits (Australian and American), any time, for any occasion, but please don’t ask me to use yeast! I rationalize it by believing it does help keep my bread consumption down!
Am chuckling at your “unreasonable fear of yeast”, Constance. As for your rationalization that it keeps the bread consumption down I totally agree. It does! On both days I baked sourdough bread that’s what I ate for the next few days! Not good for losing or even maintaining weight. So my starter is in the fridge and I will probably only bake with it when I have people coming to help me eat it. (I have an ear-worm at the moment of “I will survive” — It’s probably the sourdough starter singing at me from the depths of the fridge.)