Saturday, February 6, 2010

Sour Dough Bread - Success

After building up my sour dough starter for about five days, adding 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup unbleached white flour and warm water each day, I decided to try the following recipe from my favorite homesteading book.
I used the Sourdough Whole Wheat Bread Recipe with some changes.

The night before, I combined 4 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, 1 cup starter, and 3 1/4 cup lukewarm water. I left this in the bowl upstairs where it is stays a consistently warm temperature. Early this afternoon I added 1 t. baking soda, 1/2 cup oil, 2 t. salt, and enough flour to make a kneadable dough (about 5 cups - I used white flour for 3 of these cups). The dough does tend to be sticky. I melted 4 tablespoons of butter and divided evenly among three bread pans. Then the dough was divided into three loaves and I coated each loaf with the butter in the pan and set the pans by the woodstove for about 2 hours. Next they were baked in 350 degrees for about 35 minutes.


The good news is that everyone in my family loved it. The bread did not have a super strong sour dough taste which some of the children had not been overly fond of with my old starter. It made a nice and soft, moist, tasty bread with a slightly crunchy crust.

I will continue to feed the starter each day - about 1/4 cup flour and nearly 1/2 cup warm water. If I know I won't be using it for awhile, it can be stored in the refrigerator without feeding.

Warm wishes, Tonya

11 comments:

  1. They look beautiful. You are an inspiration. I wish I could eat bread!

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  2. wonderful...i love homemade bread...sounds like you have this one down to perfection.

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  3. Beautiful! I can't wait to try this :)

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  4. I am gonna have to give this a try. Just got into making bread and this looks awesome!

    check my blog for a look at my Baguette and Epi that are still warm from the oven!

    http://fromcooktotrainedchefandbeyond.blogspot.com/2010/02/homemade-baguettes-easy-awesome_07.html

    Dylan

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  5. Beautiful! The BUTTER looks fab, too! Congratulations!

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  6. Beautiful breads!
    Makes me look back to the days when I made bread three times a week. Kids are grown and gone now, so I don't make it any more. Oh, well!
    I'm glad you're carrying on this gift. That's wonderful.

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  7. Lovely! I really want to try making this starter too. One of my kids complains about strong sour dough taste as well, so I'm glad you mentioned this didn't have that taste. Thanks, Tonya! :)

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  8. These all look so earthy and yummy. I need to get up the courage to make a starter, and I would love to see if I could adapt this to a GF recipe.
    Thanks for the inspiration Tonya

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  9. What a coincidence! The day before you posted this, I made sourdough pancakes using the recipe from that same book. :) They were delicious!

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  10. I've just made my first loaves with my own starter too, the recipe I used is quite different to yours. It turned out well, I really liked the texture and flavour, unfortunately only 1 of the children agreed with me. I'm keen to try a bunch of different recipes to see what I can come up with now.

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  11. Oh, I have this book too! What a treasure it is, with information about EVERYTHING, lol!

    BTW, I love your post about your change in January. :)

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