I have returned to my roots.............my paternal grandfather was a baker in Vienna Austria so it is appropriate that since I have lots of time on my hands and nowhere to go that I would turn to baking as a passtime.
My husband loves sourdough bread and we discussed baking some. Well you need a starter so he went to Amazon and ordered some dehydrated San Francisco starter. It took me three weeks to get up the nerve to actually get it going. This involves about five days of feeding and waiting. The starter begins to smell very much like vinegar and begins to bubble after a few days. Ok, I keep going with it and at one point it went in the fridge for a few days and came back out and kept going. Finally I made a loaf and it was amazing. I learned that the discard can be used for other recipes and I have made sourdough biscuits twice and they are amazing. I made sourdough bread in the bread machine and it was pretty good. Well yesterday I was making my third loaf of the sourdough bread and decided to document the process. This is my jar that sits on the counter with the starter. I feed it every day with flour and water and it just sits there and does its thing. It rises and falls and bubbles. As I add more flour and water each day I have more starter and can make stuff with it. I am still very much learning how it grows and how to care and feed it. I have already dehydrated a good portion of it just in case something ever goes wrong.
One thing with baking that really goes back to the European roots is weighing the ingredients instead of measuring. I begin by weighing the flour, water, salt and starter. I have also learned to adjust the dough with more flour if needed because the amount of liquid in the starter has not been consistent for me. I learned to bake yeast bread in 4H club in the 4th grade so kinda know the right consistency of dough should be like.
Here is the dough taking shape. I continue to knead by hand till it is able to stick together in a very thin windowpane when stretched .................... something I saw on a YouTube video. It takes about 15 minutes and I find it very therapeutic to work the dough.
Once the dough rises twice you dump it out on the baking surface. I love this silicone sheet I got at Costco some years back as it is no stick and seems to work really well. You want that flour dusted on the top as it adds to the surface and allows it to hold together.
Scoring the bread is the last step before it goes into the oven and there are many decorative ideas for doing this on Pinterest. I do not have the proper tool so I use a knife and just do an easy pattern. This is vital to allow the gasses from the bread to release during the baking and makes the bread rise.
Here is the finished loaf fresh out of the oven...............it did not last very long and was so yummy!
