Bread

Spelt flour loaves -my first two loaves

A little over a month ago I made a sourdough starter following the instructions given on a you tube video. From that I have made bread each weekend and am enjoying the early stages of being a bread maker. It has been a lot of fun. After the initial week of building a starter from wholemeal spelt flour and water I have been able to make 2 loaves of bread each weekend with varying levels of success. Obviously, providing you care enough to try to get better, you will improve over time at least to some level of accomplishment.

One of the interesting things for me about bread making is the small number of ingredients that are used to make bread by this traditional method. In it's simplest form bread has only 3 ingredients, Flour, Water and salt. That is it. Four if you count time or naturally occurring yeast. I have a challenge for you. Go and pick up the loaf of bread you bought from the supermarket, or if you don't have one, grab one off the shelf next time you are shopping. Count the ingredients in the bread. I picked up a wholemeal loaf at work and had a look. It had 17 ingredients. I saw on a show on netflix the other week that the wonder bread that is sold in the USA has an amazing 25 ingredients. The commentator on the show made the statement that he thought that perhaps many of the people in our society with gluten intolerance are perhaps allergic to some of the 22 other ingredients in bread and not actually suffering from the gluten itself. This does not include the 1% of the population who are allergic to gluten. Whether or not this is true I have no idea and as little more than a bloke who cooks food for a living I can't say, but it does make you think.

A white loaf and a Multigrain loaf  

Kneading bread is such a homely old world thing to do. Bread is believed to have been made as far back as 14,600 years ago. So, when you make bread you are part of an ancient tradition, at least in your own way. 

So, what is my process? How do I manage my sourdough starter? It is quite simple really. In the first week of making the starter I added equal parts flour and water, day 1 50 grams flour and 50 grams of water. The starter was left out on the kitchen bench over night to begin it's activation. Day 2, another 50 grams of water and flour. The mixture stays at room temperature for all of this first week of the process. Day 3 the fun begins. Discard 100 grams of the starter and then add 100 grams flour and water each. Day 4 discard 150 grams of starter and top up with 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water. Around day 3 or 4 you will start to see and smell the fermentation taking place in your starter. What causes this reaction? The naturally occurring yeast in the air. Day 5 discard 200 grams and top up with 150 grams of flour and water (300 grams in total). Day 6 discard 250 grams and top up with 200 and 200 again. Day 7, I have good news, we are ready to bake. I got this information from the I love cooking Ireland you tube page on their video on how to make sourdough. Make sure you check it out.

Sourdough starter

How do I look after the starter when I only bake once a week? As long as you don't use all of your starter you will not have to go through the starter making process ever again. Currently thinking of who I can trust to look after it when I go on holidays. So basically what I do is after I have used some of the starter to make bread, approximately 2/3 of the starter, I then stir together 200 grams of flour and 200 grams of water and mix this with the leftover starter. I rinse the jar that I use clean it out and then pour or spoon the starter back into the jar with the lid left loose to allow air to escape. An airtight jar may explode when the ferment is taking place. This mixture goes into the fridge until the night before baking, so in my case that is Friday afternoon when I finish work. I take it out, put it on the bench and it is ready to go Saturday morning.

Sourdough pizza , the recipe made 6 dinner plate sized pizzas

Over the last month I have made a basic white loaf, spelt loaf, a multi grain loaf, pizza bases and as I type this I am about to pop a rye bread loaf into the oven. I have taken a little time to get the oven temperatures correct, sometimes the loaves have ended up with a little too much sunshine. Having Said that all the breads have been edible and most cases well above edible. In fact I would say that they were yum. Even the loaves that were a little darker on the outside were great to eat.
If you like the idea of making your own real bread at home so that you can control what goes in your food then I highly recommend taking that week, probably only five minutes a day to get the starter going, jump on board and go for glory.

Sourdough Nutella pizza

multigrain loaves