Tags
baking, bread, Daring Bakers, French, starter, whole wheat, yeast
Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!
I like to think that I have pretty good luck with bread. The fear of yeast has never been something I’ve understood because every loaf I’ve made has magically turned out with minimal fussing. Keywords: luck, magically. There’s a lot I have to learn about bread.
Sourdough and starters had never entered my little yeast-perfect bubble of bread-baking. Truthfully, I didn’t know much about them, so this challenge definitely piqued my interest. Not being a fan of rye, I went for the French Country Loaf even though the host had rated the difficulty of the recipe as medium to hard. I got this…I’m good with bread!
Famous last thoughts.
I started the starter last Tuesday, and it grew, which was exciting! I even named it Brutus, the name of a lead character in Gentlemen Broncos. (Oh my holy crap, surveillance does… I hate those. This is ridiculous, that’s the most well guarded yeast factory I’ve ever seen!) …there’s a connection, see?
Er, anyway… Brutus was ready to use on Saturday, but I fed it a couple extra days so I could make the bread on Monday (yesterday). I woke up at 6:30am, refreshed the starter, and then started making the dough around 11am. It was the evening by the time it was finished, and here I thought I was totally successful because from the outside it looked nice to me!
Ah, but then I cut into it and was greeted with this sad scene:
My theory is that the production leaven wasn’t ready when I used it. It wasn’t bubbling very much, but I thought that maybe it had already bubbled/eaten and deflated because I read in the forum thread that that was a possibility. It just seems weird that it looked like it rose on the outside, but didn’t inside. Any other ideas? It doesn’t really taste like sourdough either, and weirdly smelled like mac ‘n cheese while baking (yum?). I need to read my fellow DB’s posts to see if anybody else had similar issues.
Even though this wasn’t a success (and part of the challenge was to make something with our finished bread), I wanted to post about this because not everything goes as planned, and it’s what I’ve been working on for the past week! Last night I started feeding my starter Brutus again as from Day 1, so I’ll post an update on how this next loaf goes…
If you’d like to see the challenge recipes along with successfully baked loaves by the others, click here! Jessica made some great videos showing how to execute some of the steps, so look out for those.
UPDATE: I tried again with better luck!
bake me away! 
Argh, sourdough can be tricky. I love the name though.
Damn – it looks so beautiful on the outside! What a shame, after all your efforts. I hope your next loaf is glorious.
I didn’t know sourdough was tricky! I’ve always just been too lazy to attempt it.
I think this looks like an issue with handling and temperature rather than one with the starter — the cross-section lacks an open gluten structure, which makes me this that perhaps the dough was overworked. Also, the oven you’re using might not have been hot enough, which would also explain those large pockets of air at the top. Try kneading less, letting the bread rise for longer, and cranking the oven up another 25’F (at least).
Greg – Who knew?! Evidently not me…
rocksaltuk – Thanks, I hope so too!
Jill – If I had gotten that bakery job, I’d be making triple digits of loaves every night…oh boy.
Christine – Ohh! I bet you are right. I kind of went crazy with the kneading to get the dough to feel like what I was used to with other breads. The oven was my parents’ and I’m back at my place now, so we’ll see how this oven does. Thanks so much for the tips!
Major props for trying something more difficult! I haven’t had time to do mine yet (I may have to simply post it late), but I’m excited to try it since I’ve never done sourdough either. I’ll definitely be going with the rye, though…I know all about over-confident baking. :D I’m sorry it didn’t turn out perfectly – if it’s any consolation, it looks BEAUTIFUL from the outside! ^_^
I wish I liked rye because I would have tried it first! Guess I could have had someone who likes it try it… Thanks and good luck with yours!
Pingback: Sourdough Follow-Up: Second Spawn of Brutus | bake me away!
Oooh, that was an unwelcome surprise. And it was looking so good. I’ve read that starters can take a few weeks to settle down, but not really believed it !
p.s. Rye is excellent – (hence my blogname). The secret is to ensure the crust is high baked – even burnt.