July Round-Up - Part 1 Sourdough and other breads

[a_boleyn]

It's been a nice stress-free July. In spite of the hot weather, with the A/C running, and being able to do a lot of grazing out of my freezer, any cooking that I've done has been more like playing that actual cooking.

Comments

[anonymous]

Zsuzsa here.

I am thoroughly impressed! My one and only foray into wild yeast baking was a complete disaster.

[a_boleyn]

I really wasn't pleased with my results on the whole. Finally pitched the starter I had in the fridge. Though I have a bag frozen and dried starter flakes in the cupboard in a jar. Maybe I'll try again later. It's just that there are so many OTHER kinds of bread recipes that I CAN do well. :)

[spikesgirl58]

It all looks pretty damn good to me. I love bread, but it doesn't care much for me. alas, I hope happily have dove into any of these, even the ciabatta.

Your texture looks just about perfect. Do you use a machine to prep and knead the dough or do you do it all by hand? You must have shoulders of steel

[a_boleyn]

Thank you for the nice comments. The only bread I use a stand mixer for is the milk bread with tangzhong I posted back in June cause you really need to build up the gluten. "Slack" doughs like the sourdough one are very wet and you do a type of stretch and fold, let relax, stretch and fold three times every 15-30 minutes for the first hour and then once an hour for 2-4 hrs ... so no heavy duty kneading is required.

I can knead for 10-15 min at a time without a big problem if needed though I DO switch hands. Standing up for long periods of time is more of a hardship for me.

More bread coming up in the August update. One word ... stromboli. :)

[spikesgirl58]

You are still better than me - fifteen minutes of kneading would put me in bed the next day. I tend to use a mixer when I do bread and then just hand knead for a few minutes at the end. I only do a yeast white bread, though, so it's pretty straight forward. never tried any of these others, although now I am tempted.

[a_boleyn]

You don't need to get fancy with making bread as far as I'm concerned. There's a good bakery around every corner and for a single person it's not worth baking just one loaf. I don't really like it out of the freezer.

I taught myself to make a basic dough for pizzas which I don't knead for more than 7-9 minutes cause I didn't really have the money to order pizza delivery and I like pizza.

PS: I used the bread machine my SIL gave my mom for my pizza doughs for years until the seal on the paddle in the bread pan gave out and I had to pitch it. The company went out of business and I couldn't get a replacement.

[edgeofthewoods]

Good on you for getting a successful starter going! I love sourdough, but haven't attempted it in a few years.

[a_boleyn]

Making the starter was a breeze. I put out 4 oz of all purpose flour and 4 oz of water in that canning jar at the top of the page, covered it with cheesecloth and the screwed down the outer ring. Put it out on the back porch (started about 4pm) for about 4 hours and then brought it in for the night. It ended up on top of my fridge. The next morning ... I had bubbles.

Keeping it going (feeding and discarding the extra starter) after that that WAS a pain. I threw it into the fridge finally after a couple of weeks. A month later, I discarded the remaining starter in the jar. :(