beginner

I've read this website and blog for years.  Over those years I've tried lots of different breads from lots of books.  I haven't made a truly serious study of it.  I'm not baking multiple loaves a week, nor am I going through formal training to become a baker.  However I do have lots of books and recipes that I've tried repeatedly.  The first bread I ever made was a focaccia bread from a recipe I found in a USENET posting way back in the early days of the internet.  It was all I could find at the time.  Throughout college I used that plus the recipe for french baguette from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."  In recent years I've added lots of bread books to my collection, and lots of trial and error.  I have the "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" and the follow-on book.  I have a book on ancient bread making.  I have the Tartin bread book.  I'm at the stage where I want to start trying to do things more seriously.  However I'm also at the stage where I can sort of wing it and have pretty good results.

Throughout the years I always had a facination for sourdough breads.  When I moved to my current location I was lucky enough to have a neighbor who has been feeding the same starter for over 35 years.  He gave me a sample of it and it is the basis for all of the sourdough cooking that I do.  It is a very vigorous starter that I keep in the fridge and feed 1 cup of water and 1 cup of unbleached King Arthur All Purpose flour every 1-2 weeks.  It has served me well and I look forward to continuing with it.

Like many others I will be posting recipes and pictures of the results of those recipes.  Some will be from the standard sources.  Others, like my first entry, will be the results of my experimentation.  I don't always follow the rules as much as I should, but as long as the results are good (or at least good enough) then I guess I shouldn't complain.  It is just a bit intimidating to make posts of such amateur results when there are so many amazing posts of delicious and beautiful breads by other members.  We all start somewhere I suppose, and this is where I'm starting the sharing of my bread adventures online.

Hank

So, as would be appropriate for a first post, a first for me: sourdough!

Now, to be honest, that tasted great. I've not baked (or even eaten) sourdough before, and the odour that came off whilst it was baking reminded me of *cough* baby vomit *cough* So I was apprehensive, before that first bite!

Not to worry though, it tasted great! I followed dmsnyder's post as the recipe (which in turn was creating Susan from SanDiego's original sourdough), except i had 500g of 100% hydration starter that was ready to go, so I used that. Also, my time constraints meant that it's easiest for me to make the dough last thing at night, and leave it for the first fermentation overnight (about eight hours) in my laundry, which, now it's Autumn (or Fall, take your pick) is around 15C overnight. Then shape it in the morning, dump it in the fridge and get my wife to take it out late afternoon for baking that evening.

I'll post up my following adventures in sourdough - this was 100% white starter, with the 50g of WW mentioned in the recipe. I've now baked two more sourdough efforts (over four days, I'm seeing how the flavour develops after sitting in the fridge for 24 hours after shaping), one with 25% WW starter and another tomorrow with 50% WW. 25% tasted amazing!

So, what prompted me to try this? I had a sourdough starter that I created from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, and with some advice from Wild Yeast. I mainly made it because I'm fascinated by the microbial side of it, and had an idea of getting some students to track the microbial population of the starter as it progressed... but no project students wanted to take it up :( (I work at a Uni)

My wife just purchased me a couple of pizza stones, and I'd just read about the magic bowl method. So I was eager to combine those two, and having the starter there convinced me to do this instead of a ciabatta or pain a'l'ancienne, which are on my list to do now!

Seems to have turned out well... as always it seems, too much baking and too little time :(

cheers

JJ