Day 194 of 365

Experiments

Today is a complete exercise in food science. A few days ago I started growing sourdough bread starter. It required a little more care than I had time for but I managed to make the funky grow.

On day 193 I attempted to make my very first loaf of sourdough bread.

I added my starter mix to the bread flour and olive oil. The recipe isn't very involved. Here's where it all went to hell. The recipe called for rest, not for the baker... for the dough.

I left the dough to rise for 3 hours until it doubled in size. I was pretty pleased with what I saw but it felt very sticky.

Following this recipe required enormous patience. Baking this bread is never going to be in my top 10 list of things to do.

Back to the instructions which required me to cut the dough ball in half and another hour of resting to let that dough rise again.

At this point I'm tired of waiting and I've still got an hour of baking in the oven.

In a perfect world I made the most amazing loaf of sourdough bread. What I actually ended up with wasn't quite perfect. The bread tastes a little sour and it's a bit dense. As first time experiences go this wasn't awesome but the starter is still growing and I'll make another attempt in the future.

Day 193 fell a little flat.

Love & Light