five : making the sourdough

Long time, no post.

With everything going on in the world, things like this little blog, unfortunately, slipped my mind. I've taken plenty of photos over the last few months, and I do have drafts from earlier on in the year to actually publish but this one just wrote itself.

One of the few things on my list of twenty-five things that I have been able to do so far is to learn how to make sourdough bread from scratch.

I started over a week ago making the starter.

Everywhere I looked, they said to use a glass jar, or if not that something ceramic. No plastic. So I used an old cheese spread jar that had to be emptied and washed out. I used 1/2 cup of plain flour and 1/4 cup of room temperature water to start this whole thing off.

And for the next seven days, I emptied half the starter, and used the same amounts as above, mixing it with a fork and leaving it out on the bench for another twenty-four hours before repeating the step. By this point, most people would have named their starter. 

I still haven't done that yet, I haven't really found a name that I think fits. I found a recipe on how to make a simple sourdough loaf on the seventh day of making the starter; I really wanted to make bread.

I just hadn't realised how long it was going to take; around twenty hours total. But I was slightly impatient so I decided that I would rest the dough in between folding it (no kneading from this recipe) on top of the heater so that it would half the resting time.

(No idea if that actually does anything, but looking back I probably should have waited the proper length of time, but that's hindsight for you. I just really wanted to make bread.)

My attempt at scoring the dough really didn't do much, but this was the first time and it's not like I won't make sourdough again with the amount of starter I still have left. There's always another day.

Another thing that I changed from the recipe, was that I cooked it for slightly longer as the oven at home is a little iffy on baking times and for the most part likes to undercook things by about ten minutes. 

For a first attempt at making something incredibly difficult, I was pretty happy with the results! I think that the next time I try and make sourdough, I'll find another recipe and stick to it completely.

Long time, no post.

With everything going on in the world, things like this little blog, unfortunately, slipped my mind. I've taken plenty of photos over the last few months, and I do have drafts from earlier on in the year to actually publish but this one just wrote itself.

One of the few things on my list of twenty-five things that I have been able to do so far is to learn how to make sourdough bread from scratch.

I started over a week ago making the starter.

Everywhere I looked, they said to use a glass jar, or if not that something ceramic. No plastic. So I used an old cheese spread jar that had to be emptied and washed out. I used 1/2 cup of plain flour and 1/4 cup of room temperature water to start this whole thing off.

And for the next seven days, I emptied half the starter, and used the same amounts as above, mixing it with a fork and leaving it out on the bench for another twenty-four hours before repeating the step. By this point, most people would have named their starter. 

I still haven't done that yet, I haven't really found a name that I think fits. I found a recipe on how to make a simple sourdough loaf on the seventh day of making the starter; I really wanted to make bread.

I just hadn't realised how long it was going to take; around twenty hours total. But I was slightly impatient so I decided that I would rest the dough in between folding it (no kneading from this recipe) on top of the heater so that it would half the resting time.

(No idea if that actually does anything, but looking back I probably should have waited the proper length of time, but that's hindsight for you. I just really wanted to make bread.)

My attempt at scoring the dough really didn't do much, but this was the first time and it's not like I won't make sourdough again with the amount of starter I still have left. There's always another day.

Another thing that I changed from the recipe, was that I cooked it for slightly longer as the oven at home is a little iffy on baking times and for the most part likes to undercook things by about ten minutes. 

For a first attempt at making something incredibly difficult, I was pretty happy with the results! I think that the next time I try and make sourdough, I'll find another recipe and stick to it completely.