I love sourdough... it is by far my favourite type of bread and so when I read that you can make it from scratch using a wild yeast starter made of literally flour and water I decided I needed to try. #
Turns out it isn't the easiest thing in the world to do.. it takes time and patience and even then could fail miserably. I started with good spirits, and following the starter recipe spent 5 days trying to create my starting point for the bread... sadly by Day 5 my starter smelt right but was not full of bubbles of carbon dioxide that would make it float in water.
Back to the drawing board, and as the Christmas Holidays landed I found I had the time to put into trying version two.
Look ma' it floats! #
Success!! This was a moment to savour.. the test piece floated in water and so I could move on to making a Leaven.
A leaven is basically a bit of the starter, mixed with more flour and water, you combine this with salt and more water and flour.
Now you want to have a morning free to potter about as you need to do small moments of folding every 30 mins six times and also give the bread periods of rest. In the end I left the loaf in the fridge ready to bake the next day.
Hot Hot Hot! #
The oven needs to be about 250 degrees for the initial baking. I used a casserole dish, because I was winging it. :) an hour or so later out comes what astonishingly looks remarkably like an actual loaf. I can confirm it also tasted pretty awesome too, very much looking forward to experimenting with baking in 2018.
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