Six month’s have now passed since I embarked on a mission to bake some of my own bread. The results so far have been decent with a few notable successes and failures along the way. This has not put me off however, and I will be attempting to bake a bit more in 2010.
My desire to bake my own bread was awakened whilst reading a copy of Pim Techamaunvivit’s “The Foodie handbook”. Talk about sourdough starters handed down through generations and the “recipe” to give birth to your very own, was enough encouragement I needed. Pim’s excellent book, looks at the no-knead approach to bread baking and my first couple of loaves were made by baking in my Le Creuset casserole with the lid on. Whilst these attempts were tasty, I felt that I needed a bit more knowledge. Time to find something a bit more detailed.
I turned to the River Cottage handbook series. Having previously purchased the RC mushroom book and tentatively eaten my first “St. George’s”, followed by some excellent results from the RC preserves handbook, I was drawn to the newly released River Cottage bread book.
Now that I actually had my own White Sourdough starter, I skipped the basic bread recipe and headed straight to the wild yeasted ones. I soon realised that the extra effort of kneading and subsequent knocking back added a lot of hours to the process but the pride I got from doing everything by hand and the added understanding you get of the whole process made it worthwhile. I was baking White, Rye and Wholemeal batches with relative success. Pure Rye sourdough was a little too dense for my liking, although a 50% mix with white flour is one of my favourites. Further experiments of adding Paradox Whisky Stout from Brewdog was also very nice. I have now started a Rye starter and made some lovely Focaccia too.
I won’t pretend it has always been easy. Still very much a learning process for me. Each loaf has been different. Most have been edible though. By keeping the starter in the fridge between feeding sessions this part has been easy. Anyone can give it a go. Along the way I have broken my Magimix and had to spend over £35 on spare parts, caused numerous power cuts by cranking up the oven to the max, much to my wife’s annoyance and had a few too early mornings as well. Overall though I would urge anyone who hasn’t tried baking their own bread to give it a go as the end results will almost always be better than your average Hovis and sometimes can be outstanding.
Okay, that’s my first post finished. I hope someone out there has enjoyed reading this. Critical comment would be most welcome. Hopefully more posts to follow.
All the best for 2010.
Craig
