sourdough bread

While there's definitely room for improvement, I was delighted by how my second attempt at homemade sourdough bread turned out. 

The little monster (my sourdough starter) has gotten a lot more sour, likely owing to a healthy culture of lactic acid bacteria.  In fact, my last 2-3 pizza attempts lacked the rise of my initial success, possibly suggesting an imbalance between LAB and yeast...? [To be investigated! ... by somehow creating a more aerobic environment...?] 

I took the advice of using a regular (but good!) bread recipe and adjusting for the amount of sourdough starter added.  Thus, following ForTheFeast's recipe for A Simple Italian Bread, I baked my second sourdough loaf as follows:

I mixed (or quasi-kneaded), in a large bowl, 1.5 cups of starter (which had been maintained with plain flour), 1.5 cups of wholewheat flour, 1/2 cup water, and a sprinkle of salt. The dough was patted into a ball and coated generously with olive oil. It was allowed to rest for 45-60mins and baked at 190C as is (in the ball shape), following a cross scoring at the top.  It was baked for ~50mins. 

Result: 

Texture:  It was about half as dense as the first attempt, though (according to my family's taste), it still needs to be fluffier and chewier. 

Taste:  The sourness was very distinctive. Excellent with (genuine) butter and Australian leatherwood honey. 

sourdough pizza

I finally understood what a mature sourdough starter is. When I checked on my starter this morning, approximately 24hrs since its last feeding,  it clearly increased in volume! It looked as if it was beginning to bubble itself out of its home (a 2 cup Pyrex container).

 

It was screaming "pizza night"!  

I didn't have enough time to mix the dough in themorning and let it rest for hours. Nor did I have any bread flour on hand.  A 5 min Google search brought me this recipe.  Unsurprisingly,  I altered it:

- Only one cup of the starter was used instead of 1.5c (mostly because I didn't have enough and wanted to leave sufficient to continue the starter)

- An extra cup of wholemeal flour (total of ~2.5c) was added, partly to compensate for using less starter and also because I wanted to make two pizzas

-  The total amount of oil used was 1/2c (it called for 8 tbps)

-  1/3 - 1/4 cup of water was also added to reach the desired consistency (enough to form dough into a ball but not damp or crumbly)

-  Aftet ~5-10 mins of kneading, the dough was allowed to rest while pizza toppings were prepared

-  2 large thin pizza bases were rolled out of it

To my delight,  the pizza rose on the pre-bake! Oh, glorious bubbles!!

The rest was easy :)  The usual favourites were added, including plain tomato paste, artichoke,  pepperoni,  and lactose-free cheese. 

The final result was definitely well received :-)  The base was flaky!  The added oil (canola) was suggested as a contributing factor to the flakiness. I think I agree. Most importantly,  the general consensus was it's not too flaky;  it was delicious! 

Sourdough Bread

Average kitchen ambient temperature: 8-16C.
It was certainly a risk to attempt culturing my own sourdough.  But it worked!  Though more work needed to perfect the bread.

The original recipe for the starter was from Nourish Kitchen but many _ad hoc_ modifications were made:
- Feeding was dropped to once a day to twice every three days to adjust for the slower growth in the dead of winter.
- Feeding amount was also reduced to 1/4-1/3 cup of flour.
- Instead of throwing excess growth away, I split the starter. This was mostly so I have a parallel experiment. 

The starter's about 12 daya old now.  Growing slow,  but growing. Nice sour aroma. Looked a bit dry this morning,  so may start feeding more often.