Sourdough Reflection

Well, hello again. It's been awhile and I have discovered the sourdough bread. Let me tell you this was completely different than quick breads and muffins, actually was nervous about this one. This part of breads, we got to do a sourdough starter that we took home and fed, maintained for a week. Feeding the starter every three days, then once it reached desire size it turned to barm, and yes it oozed out the bowl overnight. But, getting to this point in breads I had a hard time understanding the different yeast that there is, and knowing which one goes in a which at which point. Understanding the mixing process, the ingredients that make the product goes a long way. Knowing that room climate can effect the dough before baking, knowing what to do to the problem and key. The breads made me feel intimidated, sounds funny but it's true. There's a lot that goes in to producing a beautiful bread, and the terminology, know what the words mean.

Day one starter (pictured above), just some rye flour, yeast, and pineapple to juice  to start. 

     

 Through this process and making sure my starter was on track I learned more about the process, learned if you over mix the more gluten develops, the dough can be over mixed. Dough has a  window panel test, if it tears and becomes translucent it has reached it's optimum development. Proofing was a little tricky, there's not a set time, before portioning and shaping there's proofing. Know that dough should double in size, better known as bulk fermentation. Getting from a day one starter to the dough was interesting, getting the barm ready was when I found my self  talking to it, telling it had to perform correctly. Haha, but the barm is flour, water, and the starter and once completed, I had dough for several loaves of bread. At one point of feeding the starter every three days, I thought it was wrong cause, it had milky white watery look, but once it sat for 6 hours it turned to a sponge.
                                 

The final product was a sourdough starter ready to use. That was fun, we learned French bread, coranne, boule, baguette, along with some others. This was the fun part of class shaping the bread, and molding it, plus hoping that it had flavor.

 The French loaf,  rolling it out from middle to the ends, giving it this shape, I felt I could have had a little more roundness to the ends, but I'm just starting out. Scoring was the dough direction where to develop. This was a crunchy crust on the outside, but had a moist, tender inside it reminding me of a rustic bread. However, it does go great with spaghetti and meatballs.

 The boule, was easy to shape and score. The color turned out awesome on this. Once again had a  tender, moist inside, great flavor ae well.

                                                    Biga bread

In this part of class, in this section I didn't think I would like breads but I love it.  I found myself  thinking of breads to make with dinners, and what I can add to them, dill and lemon, or orange and dried cherries, and etc. The list is endless of to do with bread, there are hundreds of different types to make, enjoy and maybe give some to friends.