newbie help...
i am an absolute beginner to baking bread. i started a few weeks back with regular yeast in the cute little packets and my simple sandwich bread was coming out perfect! I was so excited! i was able to make very basic bread taste good!
Next was to grow my own starter. My goal is to be able to bake bread for my family in much the same way that a country mother or gramdmother would have before commercial yeast was available.
I started a starter according to the diections i have seen all over both here and other sites online. There are variations of course but in general put equal parts of flour and water in a jar, stir, feed and wait.
Today is day 9 ans the starter smells yeasty and is foamy, once or twice a day I pour out half of it and feed it with equal parts Ww flour and water.
Last night I thought I would try it out and see how it would do at rising bread. I left to bulk rose in the oven overnight. This morning when I got up, it had indeed doubled! I punched down and shaped and placed in loaf pan, coveted and placed back in the oven to proof the second time..... And nothing happened. I waited several hours and finally just baked it. It is not edible. Moist, dense, and hard. My question is this, is my starter just too young or do I need to start a new batch? I just peeled an organic apple and stuck the peel into my starter hoping this might help. I will never be a professional baker and I will probably never weigh out my ingredients or make bread pretty enough for magazine covers! I just want to be able to provide good nutritious bread for my family to eat, in a sustainable way. Any help you guys could offer is HUGELY appreciated.