Sourdough

 

I was given some fantastic sourdough starter a few weeks ago. I immediately made some bread… or tried to. Unfortunately my bread was  a bit dense and not quite as airy as I wanted them to be so, the next weekend I set out a cup of starter and got started. After feeding my starter and putting the rest of my starter back in the fridge, I set it out overnight to see what would happen…

I was super surprised, I have never had such an active starter, it went from a few bubbles on Friday night to a living breathing creature on Saturday morning. I immediately got started. After visiting my starters parent batch and seeing and tasting the delicious airy  bread that it made I started asking questions. It turned out that the one ingredient that I was missing was vitamin C. So I went to the store and bought a bottle of chewable vitamin C, took one out and crushed it to bits. Then started on bread again.

After letting my starter and Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) with 1 1/2 cups of flour rest for 90 minutes I added a bit more flour and had a wonderful dough to knead for a few minutes. Then I let it rise for 2-3 hours inside our TV cabinet, ( the warmest non drafty place in the house.) Then I portioned the dough out and rounded it over to let it rest for a few minutes.

After letting the dough rest for a while I got my mini loaves and one large loaf ready to rise again. 2-3 hours later we were ready to bake. This time I got light airy bread! The recipe and sourdough starter both come from Sourdoughbreads.com. The instructions are a bit long but filled great information and you can buy starter from this website as well.