Hello All,
Just thought I would say hello and see what you think about my first attempt. I followed the "make your own sourdough starter" section earlier this week and baked my loaf this morning. The reason I ask if I have cheated is because the starter seemed to be very active much quicker than the guide suggested. This is the flour I used for both the starter and the loaf itself. This has added lactic acid, would this speed things up?
On day four I decided that the starter was active enough as it was spewing out of the jar. I then used about 280grams of the starter with the quantities of flour, salt and water as described in the recipe from the beginners tutorals.
I did the ten second neads and then folded after an hour. I then had to leave it fror 3 hours at room temp. I then shaped and put in a loaf tin lined with a tea towel. This went into the fridge from about 3'ish until 7.30 the next morning. After about an hour and a half I baked at 210 for 45 mins. This was the result:
The crust is quite dark and the slash had not opened up massively but I am pretty happy with my first attempt. I don't think I got a massive rise in the oven but when cut open the bubbles seem pretty reasonable:
Any thoughts about how I could improve would be greatfully received. Importantly it tasted pretty good.
Having made bread using yeast and a fair bit of neading I was impressed at how little effort this took,just a lot of waiting.
Cheers,
Biff.
Replies
[quote=biffb]
Hello All,
Just thought I would say hello and see what you think about my first attempt. I followed the "make your own sourdough starter" section earlier this week and baked my loaf this morning. The reason I ask if I have cheated is because the starter seemed to be very active much quicker than the guide suggested. This is the flour I used for both the starter and the loaf itself. This has added lactic acid, would this speed things up?
On day four I decided that the starter was active enough as it was spewing out of the jar. I then used about 280grams of the starter with the quantities of flour, salt and water as described in the recipe from the beginners tutorals.
I did the ten second neads and then folded after an hour. I then had to leave it fror 3 hours at room temp. I then shaped and put in a loaf tin lined with a tea towel. This went into the fridge from about 3'ish until 7.30 the next morning. After about an hour and a half I baked at 210 for 45 mins. This was the result:
The crust is quite dark and the slash had not opened up massively but I am pretty happy with my first attempt. I don't think I got a massive rise in the oven but when cut open the bubbles seem pretty reasonable:
Any thoughts about how I could improve would be greatfully received. Importantly it tasted pretty good.
Having made bread using yeast and a fair bit of neading I was impressed at how little effort this took,just a lot of waiting.
Cheers,
Biff.
[/quote] Hi
Ihave bought this brand of flour, but just the plain rye flour. I take it you are in UK? I am a newbie to dourough and have made 4 so far. First was a brick, 2nd tasted horrible, 3rd tasted good and some rise, 4th tasted great and not quite so dense! So getting there, just read that discarding some starter before feeding is to dilute the acid, did not realise that, was not getting rid of eniough, so that explains why loads of bubbles but not much volume!!!! This sourdough business trickier than it looks!
Lynn
This wessex Mill Flour contains lactic acid to give a sour flavour trying to mimic sourdough. Thats what their website says. The lactic acid may have had some effect much as adding citric acid/vitamin C tablets to regular yeast driven bread to increase the yeast activity.
I quite like the dense loafs as they toast pretty well.. At some point I will adjust the ingredients and timing to get a different result but at the moment I am happy that it was edible. Not that this loaf lasted that long but how would you store a sourdough loaf? I put this on in an old plastic bread bag in the bread bin. Is there a better way to keep things fresh?
I will attempt my next loaf this weekend. My starter has been in the fridge since Saturday when I used it and refreshed with more flour and water. It bubbled away in the fridge but I can see that it has reduced in volume now even though there are still quite a few bubbles. Can I use this or should I refresh and leave for 24 hrs.
Cheers
Hello biffb
I just keep mine naked in the bread-box. The plastic bag could make the loaf sweat a bit and could encourage mould perhaps. Some prefer to stand the loaf on the cut end to reduce drying a bit. Still others recommend wrapping in a linen cloth. Best thing is to try a few options and see what works best for you.
On the subject of the starter, my usual method is to take half of the mass that I need for a loaf and build that up with fresh flour and water 12 hours before I make the dough (timing might depend a bit on your temperature and the activity of your starter). I replace the mass that I removed from my stock and leave it on the bench for a few hours to give it a chance to 'start' feeding and then return it to the fridge. This seems to work fine for up to a week to ten days between uses. Once when I was away for a month, it needed a couple of refreshes to get back to good activity.
Once your starter has a bit of age it seems to be pretty robust.
Hope this helps.
Farinam