Simplicity Gone Sour

Over the holidays I was given a small bit of someones Sourdough Starter. I've always wanted to make good sourdough but all my starters have left me lacking for rise, and all my recipes have left me lacking for flavor. Fortunately my girlfriends father is a bit of a Sourdough officianado and has been (quite successfully apparently) making good sourdough for some time.

Since I've never had much luck with sourdoughs (and since I was mildly inspired by Mikes post) I decided that the best way to go was to keep it simple. I read a bunch of recipes for sourdough and settled on the following:

two cups starter
some oil (to keep the dough from sticking mostly)
a small bit of sugar (to get the yeasties going)
and a smaller bit of salt (for flavor)
and enough flour to make a dough (I made mine fairly soft as I was afraid of too dense a loaf)

I mixed it all up, kneaded, covered, and walked away. I checking in on it now and again and after about two hours it had doubled. I loafed it, scored it, put it on the stone, and waited about 20 minutes until it started to puff up.

Now this is where I strayed from habit. Rather than pre-heating the oven, I put the bread in at the same time I turned it on (someone suggested it and it didn't seem like a bad idea at the time). The total bake time turned out to be something like an hour and a half, unfortunately I pay attention to the bread more than I do the time...

I'd say I learned two things from my this try at sourdough that probably apply to all breads, but seem to have particular importance to sourdoughs; first, start with good ingredients (starter!) second, be patient.

Decorative Beer Bread

For Christmas this year I went to Molly's house to meet her family (well, the whole family) for the first time. Since I had the whole day before off, I decided to embark on a slightly more ambitious bread project both to impress the family and to see if I could yield any kind of positive result.

My goal was to make a bread basket, from which all the components were actually made of bread. That's right, the basket, the bowl for the dip, and of course the bread; all made from bread. I opted for two types of bread for some contrast in color and texture. The base bread (the basket and the bowl) were beer-bread made from a home-brewed stout. The filler bread was a an onion-herb white loaf. For the dip I opted for a cheesy-beer spread (same stout as the
bread).

I made the onion herb loaf first and baked it into small long loaves to be sliced and put in the basket. Since I made entirely too much I made a wreath bread also (basically an Epi in a ring). While this was rising I put together the beer bread. This I made by soaking some oatmeal and cracked rye in the beer, adding some hot water and then the rest of the ingredients to make the dough.



To make the basket I rolled out a piece of dough, pizza crust style, and twisted some long thin dough-ropes to make the basket walls, then I added the handles (flat pieces of dough folded over). The bowl was just a simple round loaf rolled in oats. I baked the basked and the bowl separately and then put them together after they came out of the oven.

My apologies for not providing a more exact recipe, I just don't use them... The basic idea for the breads follows, but you'll have to fill in the details yourself:

Beer bread:

Put your beer in a bowl, add some grains (I like to use grains complimentary to the beer e.g. oats to stout, cracked wheat to hefe, barley to ale, etc...) let it soak until the grains are soft.

Add hot water to bring it up to yeasty temps and add your yeast.

add an egg and maybe some oil (I don't know, like 1/2 cup maybe)

add some white flour (preferably a high-gluten) and then more wheat until you have bread dough.


Herb Bread:

Warm water and oil (maybe a total of 3 cups liquid)

Stir herbs of your choice into water (I used onion, oregano, basil, salt and pepper, and some garlic)

Add Flour until you have a bread dough.

They all get baked the same start oven at 450, immediately drop temp to 400 when bread goes, dump some water in the oven and leave it alone until it's done.