Sourdough clock

In order to work out when i had time to make sourdough, i made a clock to help me. It has all the steps - you just match up the start time to the hour, and it tells you what time the rest of the steps will happen. Simples!

Sourdough, Parfait, Cider

Chicken liver parfait, made a good 10 days ago, sourdough made today (altho the ferment started a good 2 weeks ago), cider. Just came back from a long New Year's Day walk.

The parfait flavour has improved tremendously - the garlic has mellowed to a lovely sweetness, and any bitterness of the livers has now disappeared. I didn't know if it would still be ok after all this time, and was leaving it as a test - and this is a proper delight :)

The bread has good flavour, probably helped by now having (christmas present) a set of very accurate scales to make weighing the salt more accurate. And better structure - I kept back some of the water asked for in the recipe, was firm with rolling the dough into a ball, and proved it in a steeper sided bowl.

New year's sourdough

Two beautiful sourdough loaves :) A good start to the year!

Two loaves

I've been making loaves since the Sourdough Success, with varying degrees of OK-ness. One I forgot to put salt in. YUK. Super-yuk. One was fine, but not great - I'd been making the ferment with white flour, no rye, and it lacked flavour a bit.

So rye back into the ferment, I thought I'd give two smaller loaves a try - and they're really nice, much softer crust. I didn't make these as salty as the first loaf either, so all in all a nice very nice batch. But i do want to make them rounder, and make the dough with more structure. Needs practice.

Eaten up with leftover Controversy Broccoli soup.

Sourdough success!!

Enough photos to give you the idea :) Its lovely. Very very tasty - good sourdough flavour, slightly sticky, sweet. Only criticism is that its slightly too crusty. Will work on spraying the oven more to slow down the creation of the crust.
But overall, I'm delighted. This is exactly what I was trying to do.

I set the alarm for 07:15 to bake it off, after proving for 17 hours. Sprayed the oven, baked for 25 minutes - tapped underneath and it wasn't done enough. Back in the oven for 5 minutes. Tapped again, still not done, back for another 10 minutes. By this time, I had to hand over to Matt, as it was time for me to go to college. Then I zipped back at lunchtime to check what it's like inside! Very excited to see a really open crumb :)

I refreshed the ferment this morning, so will be able to run and run with this.
In the end, it had potato and a little rye flour in the ferment. Now keeping it going with just plain white bread flour.

Sourdough starter mkII RIP

I've killed another batch of sourdough starter. I think I now realise where I'm going wrong - lack of oxygen. The yeasts need oxygen, water, food to stay alive. By keeping the starter super-sealed, I've been starving them of oxygen.
The starter is always good for the first 2 days then gets flat and dormant (er, dead). I think it must be the lack of air. There's lots of conflicting advice on how to get starters going - do use other ingredients: potato, cabbage, grape seeds - don't use other ingredients. Keep starter covered. Keep starter open. Remove half starter as you feed it new flour/water. Don't remove any starter.
There's only one constant recommendation "get some starter from someone else".
That's not an option right now, so its time for Starter Marque 3.

Hugh Fearnley's advice on sourdough sounds good - I'm going to run with that and a melange of other things I've read and experienced.

Its worth the effort tho', and I like that some things require time, attention, mistakes, and repetition before it all comes good. It'll come good one day.

Sourdough starter mkII

We're off again. This time it doesn't look like rubble, is the proper measurements (not half portion), isn't grey, is a smooth batter as recommended in the recipe. Back in a warm dark place for 2 days.

Bread brick

Need to 'fess up here to a disaster. The lovingly cultivated sourdough = bread brick. No redeeming features.
I think it went wrong by refridgerating it too soon. I thought fridging the sourdough starter (before it had gone through the whole starter process) would be ok as it would just slow it down. Err-ERRR. Wrong answer. All the fluff went out of it, and the smell changed from a warm yeast to something much more mineral-y. Not the delicious sourness I was after.
Time to start the starter again.

Poached egg, sourdough, rocket, roasted tomato

Breakfast to keep you going all the way through a 5 hour restaurant shift. Poached eggs on sourdough, rocket with roasted tomatoes with just a little balsamic dressing.

Sourdough starter day 3

Looks brilliant!! Smells good too. Its now like a batter and full of fermentation and CO2. Very exciting. Fed it this afternoon with some more water and flour. And its back into its warm dark place for another 2 days.

Bertinet sourdough

This is the one to beat. Sweet, sticky, chewy, well aerated, good crumb. Just brilliant. Bertinet shop only open Saturday mornings, so a very good reason to get up early on the weekend.
Bertinet Kitchen website

Sourdough starter

Right. We're cooking up the yeasts now. This is the starter day 1. I made it yesterday afternoon. Plan is to leave it in the dark for 2 days. Stir it. Leave for another day. Then feed it some more water and leave for another 2 days. It'll be ready Tuesday night.
Slightly concerned it looks too solid. We'll see how it looks later on.