Bread. How afraid I am of you. The thought of touching flour actually scares me. For some reason it makes me very uncomfortable. When I was younger I wanted to become a pastry chef. Then I learnt how often they touch flour, young Carmen decided to focus on another career. So on New Years instead of making the usual wishes of losing weight, getting in shape and just generally getting your life together, I made a new goal. To master the Sourdough Bread in 2018. Not only did I now have a year to learn how to make bread, but I was going to have to touch flour. The horror.
Of course, since I am new to this, I chose the easiest, most simple to follow recipe. It’s from Tasty, link here.
A key specification of sourdough bread is that it has a starter. I called it my ‘pet’ since it lived in my fridge and had to get fed regularly (it’s also the closest thing to a real pet I’m going to get for a while). Pet and I became friends. I suggest you befriend your starter too.
Below is the story of the 3 sourdough breads I managed to make. I’ve now moved back to London (yes, unfortunately I had to throw pet out. I miss him too.) and I will need to make a new one soon.
Bread 1:
I forgot to cover the starter with film the night before I made this bread... so the starter developed a crust. It was a bit weird to knead these chunky crust pieces, but overall this didn't cause too many problems. I used the machine to knead this dough (the less I have to touch flour, the better I thought) for 10 minutes on a low setting with a knead head.
This attempt was a good start to my bread adventure. When baking your house will smell divine, and as soon as you take the bread out on a cooling tray it makes a crackling noise as if still cooking. The bread had a crispy hard crust with a soft inside. I wish I would have gotten more, and larger, air bubbles inside the bread, but for a first time I'm not going to complain!
Bread 2:
Still avoiding touching flour, I needed to get the dough to look more like in the recipe video and not as wet as mine was last time (without trying to add more flour). My solution to this was kneading it 20 minutes in the machine, versus 10. I also used level 2 on the machine, versus level 1. Using a higher 'slow' setting on the machine did help, and I suggest this.
Overall, this bread was better than the first. It also smelled and tasted more like 'sour'dough. Whether this was because the starter was older and fed once, versus it being new or how I made it I do not know. It had a flatter rise overall but is larger. The one thing this recipe is guaranteed to provide is wonderful crust, which once again was true for this loaf.
Bread 3:
I wasn't happy with the amount of air bubbles I was getting in the previous loaves, so I aimed to solve this with this bread. I decided to touch flour. The dough was kneaded on level 2 for 5 minutes, and then I hand kneaded. Yes, you read that right, and boy was it worth it. This bread had much more air bubbles throughout the loaf. I also rested the dough for 6 hours instead of the suggested 4, and this might have helped develop the flavor. I would try and have a longer rest time for my next loaf as well.
When the bread was resting overnight, I didn't add enough flour to the top. This created a similar crust to my mistake from my starter. This was reduced after kneading, but did create strange pockets throughout the loaf. Overall on this loaf I added an additional 5 tablespoons of flour while kneading and I think this is an amount that one can get away with for this recipe.
Although none of the breads were perfect, they were all edible and delicious and for me as a starter that is success. This recipe is very simple to follow, and I would recommend for any fellow starters like me. This is only the start of my bread adventure and I hope to make many more loaves soon.
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