achievement unlocked!
Apr. 15th, 2020 02:14 pmI made sourdough bread for the first time. I made bread without the use of a bread machine for the first time in decades. In spite of having no idea what I was doing it turned out fabulous!
At first I was following this recipe, or trying to: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/naturally-leavened-sourdough-bread-recipe
But then I realized at some point that it was going to take 3 more hours and I didn't want to stay up 3+ more hours, so I punched down the dough, covered it with plastic, and stuck it in the fridge. In the morning I got it out of the fridge. I didn't know where we would be in the whole rising process once it came back to room temp. After a bit I jump-started that process by heating the oven to "wicked hot summer day in Abu Dhabi" temperature, hot enough to hyperactivate the yeast but not too hot for the yeast to live, put the dough in a covered pot, and put it in the oven. When I was at a stopping point with my morning programming adventures, I took out the dough, tried to shape it into loaves, heated the oven, and baked it. In the end, very little correlation between what the recipe says and what I did with regards to time spent rising, number of foldings, etc.
It's bread. It rose. It tastes like bread.
I do not understand why so many of the beginner-level sourdough recipes on https://www.kingarthurflour.com/ call for using some yeast from a packet. They say, just in case, so you can be sure it rises, if you're new at this and you're not sure it's going to work. But then they also call for such teeny itty bitty quantities of starter. After feeding the yeast for a couple of days, what I do not have is a shortage of starter. Every time you feed the starter, you have 200 grams more starter. A big problem when one has starter is "what do I do with all this starter???" There are solutions to this problem (employed so far: make pizza, add to pancake batter) but eventually you just can't take any more baked goods. I liked this recipe because it called for no commercial yeast and lots of starter. If you had 200 gm starter at time t0, and fed the starter 100 gm flour and 100 gm water, then you have 400 gm starter at t1, no problem; and how can that possibly not rise? Starter that's been sitting on the counter and fed regularly for a couple of days has so much rising potential, it keeps threatening to climb out of the jar.
Even though I put the whole jar of starter in the bread dough that doesn't mean I'm out of starter. The previous day's pre-feeding discard went into a container in the fridge, so we can start a new round of pigging out on baked goods at a later date.
Thanks so much to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rmd for her fabulous starter!
At first I was following this recipe, or trying to: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/naturally-leavened-sourdough-bread-recipe
But then I realized at some point that it was going to take 3 more hours and I didn't want to stay up 3+ more hours, so I punched down the dough, covered it with plastic, and stuck it in the fridge. In the morning I got it out of the fridge. I didn't know where we would be in the whole rising process once it came back to room temp. After a bit I jump-started that process by heating the oven to "wicked hot summer day in Abu Dhabi" temperature, hot enough to hyperactivate the yeast but not too hot for the yeast to live, put the dough in a covered pot, and put it in the oven. When I was at a stopping point with my morning programming adventures, I took out the dough, tried to shape it into loaves, heated the oven, and baked it. In the end, very little correlation between what the recipe says and what I did with regards to time spent rising, number of foldings, etc.
It's bread. It rose. It tastes like bread.
I do not understand why so many of the beginner-level sourdough recipes on https://www.kingarthurflour.com/ call for using some yeast from a packet. They say, just in case, so you can be sure it rises, if you're new at this and you're not sure it's going to work. But then they also call for such teeny itty bitty quantities of starter. After feeding the yeast for a couple of days, what I do not have is a shortage of starter. Every time you feed the starter, you have 200 grams more starter. A big problem when one has starter is "what do I do with all this starter???" There are solutions to this problem (employed so far: make pizza, add to pancake batter) but eventually you just can't take any more baked goods. I liked this recipe because it called for no commercial yeast and lots of starter. If you had 200 gm starter at time t0, and fed the starter 100 gm flour and 100 gm water, then you have 400 gm starter at t1, no problem; and how can that possibly not rise? Starter that's been sitting on the counter and fed regularly for a couple of days has so much rising potential, it keeps threatening to climb out of the jar.
Even though I put the whole jar of starter in the bread dough that doesn't mean I'm out of starter. The previous day's pre-feeding discard went into a container in the fridge, so we can start a new round of pigging out on baked goods at a later date.
Thanks so much to
rmd for her fabulous starter!
