During this strange lockdown period, my friends have had a go on baking sourdough bread in the lack of yeast in the shops.
A few weeks ago, I found this wonderful description on how to do a starter sourdough on Kate Davies Design website, so I just had to have a go also. And to my great surprise I did get some yogurt after one day and in a week I had a good bubbly sourdough.
I had a good time kneading the dough and it worked fine - it rose nicely till the next day after, though I was a bit nervous not using a bread form when baking it.
And indeed, my first try at baking a sourdough bread did indeed come out flat and too compact.
I kept my sourdough alive for the following week - a second week really makes it alive and bubbly, so I was hopeful for my second bread to turn out great.
This time, I was thinking that perhaps my regular way of kneading bread dough with yeast might not do the trick to get successful sourdough bread, so I consulted Paul Hollywood’s advice here. And indeed - instead of kneading, I needed to fold the dough - not just once, but eight times every ten minutes!
This time the dough had much more liquid and a bit too much as it was hard to get off the surface when I finally wanted to put it into my cast-iron pot to give it a bit of shape. Again the bread rose nicely the night over and baked well with a better shape and a great deal more airy than my first go.
So today’s breakfast was enjoyed in the company of a hot lovely bread. Let’s hope that next week, it will be even better and more enjoyable.
Good luck with your own bread.
