Loafing around

After months of sour dough bread baking, a friend gave me an underused bread machine last year. Since then we have not bought many loaves, but I normally cook one or two yeast based breads a week. Tonight I made a loaf of honey whole wheat. I use the simple recipe that came with the bread maker, only I add a little molasses to the honey, as well as a bit of flax seed. I also pull the kneaded dough from the bread maker pan and let it rise in a regular loaf pan before popping it in the oven. This makes a loaf that is much more suited to slicing for sandwiches or toast.



It's a yummy concoction, and the smell of fresh baked bread lingers for most of the night.

I'm not one to loaf . . . or am I?

Yes, I'm cooking away lately. My sourdough starter is really active, and bread tends to rise in a much shorter time. The batch of loaves you see here had a little more sugar in them than the receipe calls for, as I am finding the dough getting really sour. The loaf on the top was a little undercooked unfortunately, and we had to hollow it out to get rid of the raw dough. Otherwise, a very nice bunch of very tasty loaves, which go very well with some 15 bean soup I made.

We knead the dough at the birdhaus

Yes, it's bread time again. It starts, appropriately enough, with a gooey, smelly glop called starter, shown here in it's messy recycled jar. It's active (if not attractive), having been taken out and fed the night before.

It is mixed with a mass of ingredients, beaten to a kneaded pulp. And then placed in a covered, oiled bowl for the night. I use a porcelain coated bowl, as I understand metal with affect the starter. Superstition?

The dough is then place in loaf pans (some of which are metal, so there goes the whole don't use metal thing), and then allowed to rise a second time. Not quite as long this time---about six hours. I then score the tops with a sharp knife and into the oven they go.

After about 35 minutes out they go onto cooling racks. I let them cool entirely before slicing or freezing.

Lemme tell ya, they are quite yummy. I've got the starter really going strong, and it rises better than any yeast I've ever used.

Rising to the occasion; some sourdough I have known

I got some sourdough starter from a friend a few months back, and it started me on a new pursuit: making the perfect loaf. Seriously, the baking of bread is an ever evolving process, and as I become more experienced, I make better and better bread. Here are some of the latest products of my labors:

I have made the typical San Francisco sourdough, a killer cranberry chocolate bread (with chili powder and no sugar), and a tasty herb and onion bread. The biggest secret to the process is patience as the bread rises. Sourdough takes time to reach its full potential, and the longer the rise the better the bread---to a point.