Help needed for "puffy" newbie to bread baking, who wants to be able to enjoy eating my bread
I think the one thing that has driven me to trying to bake my own bread is calories. Look at it this way: bread is on the "caution" list at the very least, or maybe even the "forbidden" list, calorie-wise. (OH-MY-GOD it's CARBS! It's CALORIES!) But I do love bread, have enjoyed my buttered toast in the morning (a long lost dream) and my mayonnaise-filled tuna or chicken salad sandwiches, or BLTs. . . . it's been a while.
So here's the thing. If you decide that you're going to eat bread it's got to be PERFECT, right? It's got to be WORTH IT, worth all those calories and carbs. So my absolute favorite bread is a thin-chewy-crusted sourdough -- really sour, you understand? -- with an intense sour taste and magnificent open "crumb. . . ." (I know I should know what that means, but "crumb" was never in my vocabulary until I hit this site. It seems like it's the body of the bread, maybe.)
And I made my own sourdough starter, then appealed to folks on various lists and got starter recipes to try, and even got a chunk of San Francisco starter to add to my own growing community of fermenting combinations. . . By golly the thing is alive, it bubbles and perks and smells heavenly. . .
Okay. Loaf number 1 was square and tasted square. (Bread machine loaf.) Loaf number 2 was kneaded in the bread machine and 2nd rise out of the machine and baked in the oven: flat and dense. I had to throw it away. Loaf number 3 same start, but just a bit higher in the baking. Not worth the calories. Loaf 4 I thought holy cow I might be able to do this. . . and I ate the whole thing. OHMYGOD! CARBS & CALORIES. (Well, it did take me a week to consume it, worth every calorie in taste, if not in texture -- still too dense.)
So this weekend I'm stepping back, knowing that I've got this magnificent starter in the fridge, poised for excellence. My process has been to get it out of the fridge on Thursday night, feed it Thursday pm, Friday am and pm, then start working on things Saturday and . . . CREATING INCFREDIBLY YUMMY CARBS AND CALORIES. . . so there it sits and NOW what do I do. Ignore it?? I can't.
What do you other "breadies" do about eating what you make?????????????
Glad to be here, love the posts and yearn for the perfection I've seen here . . . would just love to NOT have it settle on my hips!
Peggy Bjarno