Sourdough

Last Spring when we were in quarantine, I had a lot of friends that were jumping on the sourdough bandwagon. I started a starter then, but when I tried making bread, I failed miserably. I was able to use my sourdough starter I had made then for cookies, waffles, pancakes, and we tried brownies too, but my bread was not successful. 

Eventually, we got busy with summer and I threw it all away. The day after Christmas, I thought maybe, I'd try it again and see what happened. 

I started making my starter, which takes several weeks. In fact, it took me a solid month before I was able to have a starter that was bubbling and dubbling after each feed. 

To make my starter, I used King Arthur Flour's starter recipe. Basically, you mix 1 cup flour with 1/2 cup water, and each day, you'll discard all but 113 grams, add in 100 g flour and 100 g water, and stir. You do this over and over again until your starter bubbles and dubbles. 

I found a big glass jar from Ikea to keep my starter in and I use a rubber band to mark where the starter  starts after I feed it. 

The part of the starter you remove (all but the 113 grams) is called "discard." There are some people who never have discard, but I keep my discard in a bowl in the fridge, and when I want to bake cookies, pancakes, or other sweets, I use my discard rather than my starter. I've actually found that after adding in my discard each time, it's nice and bubbly too. I keep it in the fridge, and take it out when I want to bake, and I don't feed this one extra flour or water. It's literally just everything I take out of my starter. 

Yu know your discard is ready when it's nice and bubbly! 

When I first made bread with this new starter I used a recipe a friend shared on Instagram and it did not turn out well. I think that my starter wasn't quiet ready. One afternoon, we had lots of cooking going on in the kitchen- my parents were in town, we were cooking, the oven was on, lots of bodies were in the house and it got really hot in here. That's when I noticed my starter really bubbling and rising, and I knew it was finally ready. 

I found a recipe online and screen shot it and that's the recipe I've been using each time I bake bread. (I'm sharing it below.)

I also purchased a proofing basket for when the dough needs to rise. 

Once your starter is ready, you add the ingredients, let the dough rest for 30 minutes, complete a fold and stretch, and let the dough rise overnight. In the morning, you complete a few more fold and stretches, and then form it in to a ball, and place in your proofing basket and let it rise for another hour and a half. 

You'll then flip the dough out of your basket on to parchment paper, score the top, and bake for about an hour. 

The result is gorgeously warm and delicious bread! 

The inside is nice and bubbly. 

I made bread again at the end of last week, and the girls and I devoured it that same day. There's something amazing about fresh, warm, homemade bread right out of the oven.

The nice thing about your starter is that you can leave it in the fridge, and pull it out when you want to bake. So, when we went camping, I put it in the fridge, and pulled it out about 2 days before I was ready to bake, and started feeding it again. Right now, I'm planning on baking bread weekly- Friday mornings or the weekend. 

Here are my screenshots of the recipe I'm using, and maybe one day, I'll type it out ;) 

I told DJ as I was making our 3rd loaf that I feel very domesticated. There's just something about the process that feels very domestic and brings me back to my roots of watching my grandma make her bread. Having the dough in your hands, shaping, forming. It's a process I'm falling in love with.