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Friday, May 15, 2020

This I know for sure...

I don't think I will ever make sourdough bread again. That I definitely know for sure.

I mixed up the wheat flour and water that you use to make the sourdough starter that gives sourdough bread/rolls its distinctive tang on May 3rd. You "feed" it a cup of flour and a 1/2 cup of water once a day at the beginning and then feed it twice a day after about the 3rd day. You do this for 7 days or so and then your starter should be ready to used to make sourdough bread. Sounds easy enough, right?

Before you feed it, you have to measure out a generous 1/2 cup of the starter, put that into a fresh bowl/jar/crock and discard the remaining starter that's left. You're supposed to do this each time you feed it. It seemed wasteful to me to keep throwing away everything but 1/2 cup of the starter each time I fed it so I googled recipes that called for discarded sourdough starter. I found quite a few.

Using the sourdough starter that should have been discarded, I made sourdough pancakes, sourdough popovers, sourdough biscuits, and maple walnut sourdough bread (it's similar to the texture of banana bread). I like to bake, but I hated having to bake nearly every night so none of the sourdough discard would go to waste.

Finally last Sunday my sourdough starter was ready to use to make bread. It was a process requiring multiple rising times, starting with letting it rest for 20 minutes after you mixed all of the ingredients together, then you kneaded it, then it had to rise for an hour, then you folded it like a letter, let it rise for 20 minutes, then you shaped into in round loaves, let it rise for an hour, then you put it in the bowls prepared with flour and a pastry cloth and let it rise for 2 1/2 hours and then finally it's time to bake it. Mine baked for about 40 minutes. The recipe stated between 35 and 40 minutes. 

They turned out really well, but it seemed like an awful lot of work to make two loaves of bread. I love sourdough bread, but in the future I think I'll just buy it.

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