Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Bread making
I remember trying to make bread in my 20's. I guess I had some successes. As a young mother I was given a sourdough bread starter. I made bread with this for years. It made wonderful bread and cinnamon rolls. The problem was the recipe called for lots of sugar and oil. I'd let the starter die for my own health benefit. The bread was so good, but so not good for me. For the last several years, I've been making bread with the same sourdough starter but somewhat modified. I cut the oil way back and left out the sugar. Then I started adding whole wheat flour. Everything I did was just trial and error. I found I couldn't use all whole wheat flour because it wouldn't rise well enough. So my most recent challenge has been getting all whole wheat flour to work. I happened to use freshly ground wheat flour from the health food store and it rose wonderfully. So I took a bread making class and learned more about wheat mills and baking with freshly ground whole wheat flour. So I am currently shopping for a wheat mill. I've ordered some hard red and white wheat berries. I love working with dough and baking. I have plans to branch out into crackers and rolls. I've also made beer which some people call liquid bread. The whole science of nutrition is interesting to me but I'm really a baker at heart. Bread and dough is this living thing that requires attention and responds differently each time you bake. Oh and the smell is just wonderful when it bakes.
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The smell just might be the best part--why have I never seen a candle with that scent?
ReplyDeleteBread was what got me into the kitchen in my late teens. Freshman year of college, our dining hall always had loaves of bread that had been baked that day (rumor had it the local Amish provided our bread). I loved it so well that I went into withdrawal when I went home for the summer, and since there was no bakery to speak of near us, I did what I had to do: pulled out mom's Betty Crocker cookbook and started baking!
I quickly branched out from there, but I haven't had a lot of success with sourdough. I had a starter for a while, but my favorite thing to make from it was pancakes. When I tried to make breads, they didn't rise well unless I spiked the dough with commercial yeast, which kind of defeated the point of sourdough!
I don't remember for certain, but I seem to recall that the recipe I had for a starter began with rye flour and fed the starter with whole wheat--based on what you're saying, maybe that was the problem?