BREAD

My first batch of excellent sourdough.
I have come to find out that when baking bread there is no exact recipe from person to person. Well for me at least. I was never happy with any of the results i get from making bread by the book when i started a few weeks ago. well actually i have been doing bread on and off since about 2000.

First experience with bread was poor. I tried it by hand and it was not so good. it was heavy, flat, i could never get the right dough texture and so on. And a few years back i was very impatient so i gave up without even learning from my mistakes.
My husband, boyfriend then, thought i would have a better time if i got a bread machine. Good idea, very expensive but good idea. I spent my time making rolls which were ok at best and loaves of bread (following the recipe to the T) that were heavy and lifeless. When we had moved from that apartment we were in the bread machine got packed up and was never used. A few months ago i had become incredibly bored. We have our new house and things are easier to clean because there is a place for everything.. meals are easier to cook because we finally spend more money on groceries to get great things for great dishes so i had been cooking from scratch every night. it got boring with a clean house and a home made meal every night and i couldn't garden yet at that time of this year so for a couple months i thought of what hobby i would like to pick up. I do everything from knitting, sewing painting and so on but none of those are actually interesting and i did not want to be stuck sitting and working on something. I thought that those were also too expensive for my taste. I thought of the the only thing that would be beneficial to the household. bread. wonderful!
With bread i can show off talent and please people at the same time.
you do not get many bread bakers that much anymore. and within our group they must be hiding. But the cool thing is sharing my baked bread. I had jason take in some sourdough into work one day and he said people ate it right up.. how exciting! but that was one loaf. I cannot wait until he shows up with the basket of the many different breads.
This bread also makes a great gift so i will be baking for many occasions. I just love doing it and i need a reason to do it.
It will be great once i have some fruit or something to make home made jam out of then i can do the bread with jams.
so back to my trials and errors this time around.
I got the bread machine out, found the recipe book for it, bought the ingredients and started making the same kind of bread loaves as before, heavy and lifeless. I tried a few things and found that this machine was only good for a thick sandwich bread (which is great sliced thin) and making dough. so i thought i would give the whole hand making process another try. pulled out the ole' homes and gardens cookbook my mother gave me years back (that i love) and started to read before i actually did. Come to find out there is a lot of tips and troubleshooting advice on there so i read them all. I started with a batch of french bread. I actually like the recipes in the book because the bread machine calls for bread flour specifically and i did not have any at that time because i was out.
well the french bread turned out ok. two loaves, very ugly, but ok.
that night the first loaf was cut in half long-ways and drizzled with olive oil, butter and garlic to make the best garlic bread i have had in a long time. Come to find out that garlic bread is a great filler with dinner. when you buy the texas toast ones from the store they are so light and airy that they are just flavor on air. we had leftovers that night and my husband helped himself to two servings of the bread.
the bread from the bread machine just sat around for a while while i tried to do the hand made breads.
Under the bread recipes i tried to make cinnamon rolls. not so good.
but i know what i did now but i decided i like the ones from the store better because i do not want to spend 3 hours making fresh ones.
well then onto the next project. i do not know if it was the interest in trying something new or a craving i had that drove me to try to make sourdough. so i investigate what sourdough is. what gives it it's taste that is different. i could not believe the step that the tell you about how to make starter.
1 cup of 120 - 130f water
1 cup flour
teaspoon sugar
packet of yeast (if you want a quicker starter that will go right to fermentation and not spoil)
mix
cover with cheesecloth
leave for 5 to 10 days stirring it a few times a day
Now i thought this was interesting because i really hate the thought of leaving food out, rotted foods make me gag. i was afraid for any mold or bad smell or anything. so i followed the recipe to the T and let it sit. it looked so nasty, soupy
and so when i finally found that it was not rotting and actually fermenting and started to smell like a beer i was excited that it worked. well then i thought that people have been making it this way for a while and not be afraid of it and most of what might be spoil will cook out of it so not to worry.
i waited patiently, made my first two loaves and they were great!
a little heavy, but good.
The first two loaves i made i tried a pan loaf and a round loaf. the pan loaf was heavy and the round loaf was so so.
so i tried it again. I had an idea tho. If it is heavy then let it rise some more. Unfortunately i was ill that day. the loaves did rise perfectly and wonderfully more than last time when i had placed them in the oven with a bowl of boiling water under them to rise with. they got so huge and airy but i had fallen asleep and the loaves got so tall they fell. I cooked them anyways. they were heavy, flat, but had a good sourdough flavor.
Now every time i used the starter i fed it and replenished it so now i am on three weeks with the same starter. I found it was getting more of a sour taste and so i started feeding it with more sugars.
Onto meal planning for another night. I wanted to do burgers on sourdough rolls.
I followed the same recipe for the sourdough and then made them into 8 rolls letting them have ample time and warmth this time using plastic wrap to hold in moisture and so on. basically if you watch it like a hawk and through experience judge textures, consistency, and appearance then you can tell what will be the best.
the rolls became so huge. They cooked up well. before the last rising stage i cut two slits on the sides of the rolls for easier upwards rising and for easier cutting when the rolls were done. it worked out perfectly. a nice sourdough (not too sour) good texture, not too heavy, wonderful as a hamburger bun. Success!
Now in the meantime i found that if you take the heavy loafs from the bread machine and cut them with a good bread knife you can cut them into strips toast them and make them into good dippers for sauces, also i found if you take the french bread, cut it short-ways into thin slices you can make great bread chips.
you stick them in the oven on 250 to 300 and keep on toasting them until they basically become crouton. then dip them in butter, olive oil, minced onion, garlic salt ( melted and stirred together)
then toast them until crispy again. My father seemed to like these and i will be making more for him soon .
also during this last week i have looked for more info on the sourdough starter. I found you can make your own without yeast using just flower sugar and water. tried that but after two days i had to throw it out.. I do not know if i had to wait any longer for it to ferment or what but i smelled of spoil and i threw it out. I rather work with something that is already working for me now.
So.. Now with the original starter. I have no more yeast in the house. The regular recipe i have been using calls for a pack of yeast while making the actual bread recipe. i thought I do not get out much and it is a haul to the place i buy the yeast at so i did some research and found that the yeast in the starter should be enough for the bread. apparently i can just use that but it will take longer for the rising. Ok so now i am in the process of wanting to make this but i only have one jar of starter. so that means only one loaf at a 24 hour time. which sucks. so this time around i had taken the starter, poured half of it into a jar, fed it to replenish it and let it sit 24 hours, now i have two jars of starter. happy day.
now i going to try to make the sourdough rolls for my husband for friday at work.
i will make the dough today, let it rise the amount of time it needs to (possibly overnight) then bake tomorrow and he will have rolls for friday.
I hope all goes well.
But today i will try to get my husband to let me order some bulk yeast online.
we will see how that goes.