a bread making success!

After many semi-successful batches of bread, I've finally created a truly magnificent batch of home-made honey wheat sourdough bread!! The finished product that you see below was positively the best batch I've created yet, despite all the odds working against me: the lack of counter space in our room (there is none), the highly questionable oven in the lounge (it takes 30 minutes to pre-heat), and the inhospitable rising conditions (our frigid, dry air conditioned room). When it came out of the oven, it smelled SO heavenly.

Upon slicing it the crusty outer layer and the soft airy texture on the inside made our mouths water. My roommate and I immediately spread a little butter on it, and quickly devoured 1/2 of the loaf. When we felt we'd had enough, I wrapped up the second 1/2, and put it away for later. (Homemade bread makes for a tasty breakfast in the morning). The second loaf, we took to a friends apartment for a movie night snack. It was a huge hit! I can't wait to try another batch! (Though my roommate is getting tired of the same bread every time.) "Can't you make anything other than sourdough?" I'm going to have to work on that one.

adventures in bread cont...

I'm back! After finally getting all moved in, I thought I'd take some time and report how the breadmaking was going. After my first smallish round loaf of bread (made with mostly white flour) I made a second batch with more wheat flour, and decided to allow more time for it to rise the second time. unfortunately, I forgot about it and let it rise too long. Thus, these lumpy dense, hat-looking loaves resulted. Try, try, again.

The third batch of bread came out 1092849 times better than the first!!! I used a mix of wheat and white flour again, I let it rise just long enough to give it a nice texture, but ALAS...I forgot to add salt, oil, and honey. So it looked picture perfect, but tasted...not so delicious. It went down a whole lot easier with butter and jam. (In case you were wondering butter and jam make just about any loaf of bread edible, unless it's too hard to chew, or too moldy to stomach)

I went with homemade strawberry jam.

adventures with bread

I love bread. I really do. It's probably one of my favorite foods of all time. I've always wanted to know how to bake it on my own, and recently, I've had the opportunity to try my hand at making it myself.

My loving neighbor Joy gave me a sourdough bread starter, and a lesson on making bread, so two days ago I decided to give it a try.The following pictures document the process.

This is after I let the starter sit overnight with some flour and water. So far so good.

After the starter sat overnight, I pulled out a new starter, added some olive oil and salt to the mixture, and worked in more flour. When it became too hard to stir, I poured it out and kneaded in the rest of the flour.

This part was the most fun :)

Here it is, all ready to rise!! I put this loaf into a bowl drizzled with some olive oil so it didn't stick, and covered it to let it rise.

Then, I pulled it out after about 4 hours, kneaded it once again, formed two small loaves, scored them, and set them aside on a pan to rise once more. (sorry there aren't any pictures of these steps! I took my bread over to a friends house to finish making it)

Alas! My hard work has payed off! The final product! (My friend and I ate the other loaf with butter and jam, so obviously, only one is included in this picture) Overall, it came out great for my first try! The texture of the crust was good, but the inside was a bit doughy and dense. Definitely tasted like sourdough though! In the end, it was a success.

Luckily, I've had nothing but time the past few days to experiment with different rising times and wheat to white flour ratios. Results coming soon.