I've never attempted sour-dough before, this was my first go at it, but I remember my mom making it when I was young. We've watched The Hairy Bikers Bakeation over the past several months, Tom doesn't mind cookery programmes as long as they're a bit manly, and we've been inspired to try several of their recipes. They visited a sour-dough bakery at one point in the programme and it looked so yummy. Tom has never tried sour-dough before, in fact it's very hard to find here in the UK, probably because it's seen as a French thing and therefore unacceptable. But I grew up in Seattle with Ivars clam chowder in a sour-dough bowl, only the best lunch ever! But I had no idea how to make a starter and somewhere in my mind baking bread has always been filed under the 'extremely difficult, do not attempt' section. But within a week River Cottage did a feature episode on bread baking and to my surprise sour-dough was included with a step by step guide to making your own starter. It was the universe telling me it was time to give it a go.
My starter starting to bubble. |
Now this is where I tend to go wrong with bread, and this time was no different. I added a bit of the starter to more flour (I used strong white bread flour this time so we'd get white bread instead of whole wheat) and kneaded it tirelessly for 20 minutes or so then formed it into round loaf shapes and left it to rise overnight. When I came down in the morning, instead of rising upwards it had risen outwards into a giant puddle of dough. It was bubbly inside, but wouldn't hold it's shape. So I tried again, kneading it back, adding a tough more flour and shaped half of it into a round and dusted it well with flour, hoping that would help it hold it's shape, and put the other half into a loaf tin. I baked the round after only a couple hours and it turned out alright. The loaf tin dough rose to the top of the tin quickly and I baked that straight after.
My resulting bread was a bit heavy, this seems to be my biggest problem, maybe I don't bake it quite long enough, but it was sour-dough tasty and my husband loved it, so both loaves were gone within a couple days. I'd definitely try this again, and the whole wheat flour worked a treat (more natural yeasty bits in there), but I might try a different starter and bread recipe and see how it turns out, there's a wealth of different tips and hints online, just do a Google search.