Week 3 – Making Sourdough Bread

This week I tried the washing of the culture that was too sour and I managed to make a mixed seed bread with the culture after 12 hours of proofing.

I started a new culture as well after the kilner jar broke and I was worried of glass shards in my bread.

The Challa 3 is the first result.

ImageImageThe question is how to keep the cultures over Shabbat… it seems the wrong thing to do to feed a culture during Shabbat, it seems appropriate to rest the culture in the fridge, but then it takes 12 hours to make it active again, so no bread till Sunday night.

Friday 26th April – Making Sourdough Bread

Today finally the results show, the Challa came beautiful (maybe a bit dark on the crust).

I also made Rosemary bread and muffins.

I put the white and a dose of the whole meal cultures in the fridge, I am keeping out a dose of the wholemeal because I want them to be active.ImageImageImageOn Sunday I will try to reactivate the white cultures and try making bagels.

Sourdough Experiments

challa 1I have consulted and followed three or four methods do far:

Week 1

1) Just put a cup of flour and 1 cup of water stirred on top of tumble drier, stirring for 3 days and feeding the mixture twice every 24 hours. First bread was not very risen but I had not let it raise for 8 hours but just 5.

2) Also made Challa good but threw away first culture from which it was made.

3) Made new culture following method from Stevethebreadguy on youtube: after 2 days it was lovely and bubbly, left it for another day in the kitchen, but did not stir, just put it in the fridge at the end of the three days.

4) Activated it at 7pm last night with a cup of flour, it did not rise and bubble a lot, but made the bread all the same leaving it to rise all night. Not very risen and when cooked it was a bit doughy like previous attempts.

5) I started growing a full grain culture according to the method of http://youtu.be/dpwFM_YRdwc

The video is a what, how & why of a sourdough starter. Cooking first bread after 3 days of adding flour.

6) Bought a book by Ed Wood “Classic sourdough”. He stresses the importance of the temperature it has to be kept during growth stage, so I bought cooler box and kept the  temperature at 25-26 with sock full of salt. I put whole meal culture in it.

Week 2

7) Started a new culture with his method and will see….

8) I will try to feed Steve’s culture out of the fridge all night and see if it is better tomorrow