December Daring Baker's Challenge - Letting Nature Do The Work...Sourdough

Our Daring Bakers host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create sourdough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with sourdough recipes from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley as well as delicious recipes to use our sourdough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

I tried to create a sourdough starter a few years back and it was a total flop.  It was even a cheater starter that got pumped up with a bit of yeast.  I had been meaning to start another one since then and never got around to it, so I was happy to see that this month's challenge was sourdough...  if not a bit intimidated.  Surprisingly, while I am writing this post at the last possible minute, due to the Christmas hustle, I actually had my challenge completed early in the month!

The starter that I am going to share with you was a total success!  As you can see in my photo above, my rustic French Country loaf, which was a half white, half whole wheat artisan loaf has excellent big ol' bubbles.  After two attempts with the recipe given for the loaf in the challenge, I moved on to other sourdough recipes to find one I liked better.  My starter (named Carlisle, because I guess naming your starter is the cool thing to do) morphed into a 100% hydration starter (if you asked me before this month what that meant, I would have had no idea).   That being said, I'm not going to share the bread recipe itself as I just found it too wet to work with (but it was pretty tasty and had that great chew to the crust).

While I planned on keeping Carlisle in my life for ever and ever, like many of the plants that have been in my house, he too was neglected and ended up in the compost bin.  After the Christmas clutter is packed away for another year, I'm going to make another starter... because I found some terrific sourdough recipes, which I'll share soon.

Wheat Sourdough Starter
Adapted from Bread Matters

Day 1
40g (1.5 oz) whole wheat bread flour
45ml (3 tbsp) water

In a Tupperware of plastic container with a cover (a 4-cup container is perfect), stir flour and water together well.  Cover and let sit in a warm place (it doesn't need to be super warm, my spot is only 20-21 degrees Celsius and I didn't have any problems.

Day 2
Starter from day before
40g (1.5 oz) whole wheat bread flour
45ml (3 tbsp) water

Beat the new flour and water into yesterdays mixture, cover and put back in it's warm spot.

Day 3
Repeat day 2 (this is where I started to vary a bit from original recipe, but I had great success, so I'm sharing my way)

Day 4
Starter from day 3
120g (4.5 oz) all-purpose flour
100ml (1/2 cup less 4 tsp) water

Day 5
Your starter should be established.  If it is not bubbly and yeasty smelling, repeat day 4 (I did, because I needed an extra day)

Day 6
Your starter should be really established!  You can use it in any recipe calling for wheat sourdough starter (or leaven).  If you aren't ready to bake with it yet, you can scoop out a cup or so, discard it (or give it to a willing friend) and refresh the starter with 50g each of water and all-purpose flour.  By feeding it with this ratio, it will turn into a 100% hydration starter, which seems to be the most commonly used.

If you plan on using your starter frequently (aka daily) you can leave it out on the counter, but you will need to use/refreshen it every day.  If you will be baking infrequently, you can store the starter in the fridge, feeding/using once a week or so.

As the second part of this month's challenge, we had to use our sourdough loaves in a traditional recipe.  I used my second French Country loaf to make a variation of the Pioneer Woman's Bread Pudding.  My husband had not had bread pudding before and he absolutely loved it!  I found it way too sweet (but I did substitute half of the sugar for brown sugar, which would have only made it taste even sweeter), and too wheaty with this loaf of bread (again, due to my adaptation to her posted recipe).  I normally enjoy bread pudding, so I can't wait to try her recipe again with a different loaf because it is so darn simple.

So while I am still nowhere near being an expert on sourdough, I did finally create a starter of my very own and if all goes well, will find the perfect loaf of bread to make with it.  In the meantime, stay tuned for more yummy things to do with all of the sourdough starter you will have hanging around.

Enjoy!