Adventures in Bread Baking

The beginning

I've been wanting to figure out how to make sourdough bread for some time now, and have actually started a couple of starters (and eventually failed to keep them alive). I've had very mixed results with sourdough breads in the past, but I'm intrigued by the possibility of using wild yeasts and bacteria (instead of store-bought yeast) to make bread. It's ancient and modern, delicious and nutritious. And in this new stay-at-home time, I figured this was a good time to finally figure it out.

Guided by Tartine Bread (which was recommended by a friend of mine), I built a sourdough starter a couple weeks ago, and was finally ready to put it to the test.

First bread

Here's the starter (a few weeks back). Nice and bubbly, slightly sour, but not too sour.

Mixing the starter into some warm water. One test of an active starter is that it floats on the water. This stuff is barely floating, so I'm not sure it's really ready.

Here's the bread dough a couple hours into its first rise. You can see some bubbles along the side, which is a good sign.

But then something went wrong. I think the problem might be that I forgot about the dough for several hours, then it got late so I put it in the refrigerator overnight. Here it is, the next morning, looking like a delicious pancake that didn't quite make it into the skillet.

I was pretty certain it wasn't going to turn into a beautiful loaf of bread, but I figured I'd bake it anyway. This frisbee was the result.

Dense, tough, and ready to chip a tooth. Almost as good as Grandma Barnhart's famous biscuits.

Second bread

This one turned out a little better. I was able to start it earlier in the day and give it more time to rise. I'm liking the look of it in this basket.

And the final loaf turned out pretty well, though not quite as tall as I hoped. I was thinking it would rise a little higher in the oven, but it was not to be. This loaf had a good, strong sour flavor, which wasn't quite what I was hoping for. So, on to...

Third bread!

I think I've finally arrived, and I'm ready to open a bakery. I think I let this one rise longer than the 2nd loaf, and then I refrigerated it overnight for the final, long rise. Or maybe the starter is finally ready to make good bread. I'm not really sure, and only time will tell if I'll be able to duplicate (or even improve on) this loaf.

The adventure continues...