When I was doing the posts on the sourdough starter I said I would follow up with some on the bread, so our daily bread is all about sourdough.
When I got back into baking people I knew said, are you going to get into bread? I said no way, now look at me. I love baking bread. There is something quite rewarding about it, but I’m not totally sure why.
Making bread in the past
It could be that I have tried making bread many times in the past and when I just did it the way others did it never worked. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but the best bread for me to make were the ones where I didn’t need to do a lot of kneading. That is hard work and I always loved the ones that were no-knead, they are the best.
I did have a bread machine once, but I didn’t like the way the loaves were cooked. They always came out at such odd shapes. In the end, I gave my machine away.
There is a place here called Simply No Knead and probably 10 or 15 years ago I did go there to learn how to bake bread and did do a lot. Again, I didn’t think the flavour was great. I do love bread with a lot of flavour. In the end, I gave up making that as well.
Getting into sourdough
Why sourdough? No idea really. I can’t think of a good reason as to why I started doing it. It was something I started at the beginning of the pandemic, so it may have had something to do with that. A challenge can be a good thing when you are in lockdown.
In the previous posts, I spoke about how hard it was to get flour. Thank goodness that isn’t so much the case now. Though with parts of Melbourne are under lockdown again, and panic buying is happening all over again. So who knows, maybe flour will become hard to buy again.
Love sourdough bread
Without a doubt, it is one of my favourite types of bread. It is expensive to buy, but always a joy to eat. How hard could it be to make?
Making the bread
As it turns out it is harder than you think.
There are so many different things that can go wrong to give you a bad load. Thankfully you can still eat each one, they just don’t always look good.
I am not going to go through all the different reasons why it can go wrong in this post but will do another one on that in the future.
YouTube was fantastic for getting information and ready up on stuff. Then my friend Tracey was really valuable and helped to answer a lot of questions for me. Perhaps the best advice she gave me was that it could take me 10 weeks to get a great loaf.
It didn’t take quite that long, but I did make the decision to bake a loaf near every day to narrow that down. There were a lot of flops. Many flat loaves, but these days I am doing a lot better and feel reasonably secure that when I go to bake one it will be okay.
A few months on
It has been quite an experience. I certainly know a lot more about sourdough now than I ever thought I would. It has been so challenging but in a really good way. There really is nothing like the smell of fresh bread. The biggest shame is how long you have to wait before you carve into it. Fighting for the end pieces.
My first loaf turned out really well. It rose nicely and was a great first effort. The next few, not so much. It seems it is all in the recipe and how much water you use. How hydrated it is will determine a lot. I had a lot of flat loaves. It didn’t take me 10 weeks to start getting good bread, which I’m grateful for. Perhaps it was about 4 to 6 weeks.
It is tempting to bake every day, but we can’t eat that much bread. I do have friends who like it, and they get loaves from time to time. My neighbours have been the recipients a lot. They love sourdough too, so they get a loaf every now and then.
Now
Now, I just bake almost daily. It does take planning, but always good.
I will do some future post for you on what I have learned.
One of my favourite sourdough sites is The Clever Carrot. I love her recipes and her book.
Ahhhh so good! Love the honesty, it has taken me a while as well and even now sometimes a bread fails and it makes me so sad (bc we know how good they can be). I wrote a post on the trial and error process a few months in, but I might do a more reflective one too, that’s a nice idea – thanks! Feel free to check my post out (love the Clever Carrot as well!): https://anneliesexplores.wordpress.com/2020/05/17/how-not-to-fail-at-sourdough/
Thank you, that is good to hear. I’m trying to be honest with my baking, the good and the bad. I still get failures too. Thanks for the link.
Nice!
Thank you
What a lovely delicious share.
Thank you so much.
I used to have a bread machine years ago. I had the machine make the dough, transfer it to a regular loaf pan for the last rise. When the rise was done, bake it. It did come out nice.
When we had the panic buying back in March, the essentials for baking were gone. It wasn’t like everyone decided to get into baking. Hope the panic buying won’t return.
I could never figure that our with mine, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough.
The same thing happened here, flour was very hard to get, I hope it doesn’t happen again.
Thank you David.
Looks fantastic!
Thank you Pam.
Leanne, I totally understand your passion for baking sourdough bread, mine looks just like yours. It’s just so wonderful a warm bread with butter on it, heavenly.
It really is Cornelia, I love it so much. I hope I never get sick of baking it. Thank you.
Your bread looks fabulous, Leanne. I wanted to hop on a plane and come right over. 🙂 The pictures are fab, too. Sounds like you are doing well even under lockdown. We are back down to quarantine. Our stats are bad. Hopefully in 3 weeks, it will die down.
Thank you Marsha. Unfortunately you wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near me now, we are in lockdown again for the next 6 weeks. Yeah, I’m not struggling with it at all, I just think it is the right thing to do. It isn’t good in the States, I really hope you start getting better numbers as well. Good luck and take care.
Wow! How are you all coping financially? We have so many that have lost their businesses, their livelihood.
We are doing fine, my husband is working from home and it is working out really well. Same has happened here, which is sad, but it would be worse to have thousands of people dying because of it all.
Yes! I actually think this is changing the world. People are enjoying working from home. Our son and his girlfriend have been working from home since mid-March without a break. They both work for the state of CA. Who knows big office buildings may become superfluous. It’s the working-aged-people who are coming down with the virus the most. Anyway, I’m glad you’re safe. Email me or call me sometime. I’d love to chat. 🙂
I think you are right Marsha, it is changing things. My husband loves working from home. There has been lots of discussions here about that too, how many people will want to stay home after this. I love having him here.. Thanks Marsha, I will send one now.
I’m looking forward to chatting soon. It’s been too long. 🙂
Me too and I was thinking this morning that it had been a long time.
That was really fun. I’m looking forward to Thursday. 🙂
😀
We’ve got a new bread maker which arrived two weeks ago. My eldest can’t stop making bread. Help! 😃
I wasn’t so sold on the bread maker, they make great bread, but I think I really like the sourdough process, suits me. Thank you Khürt and enjoy your bread.
Love your sourdough posts. Looking forward to your next one. 🙂
That’s great to hear, I love doing them. Thank you Lena.
My mouth is watering! Great job!
Thank you Svetlana.
Sourdough is my favorite bread. Yours looks delicious! Congratulations.
Me too Anne, it has a wonderful flavour. Thank you, it is good and now I am finding lots of other sourdough products I can make.
Looks yummy. Haven’t had bread in 10 days. I’m drooling here.
I don’t think I could go that long without some, I love my bread. Thank you.
These look wonderful, Leanne. Just getting the starter going confuses me….so I pay to buy it, all the time knowing that homemade sourdough would be so much better.
The starter has become second nature for me now, I just guess and go for it. I don’t stress to much about it. I do understand what you are saying too. Bought is good too. Just think if you lived closer I could bake you a loaf. Thank you.
I would love it!!
🙂
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Thank you so much.
Topnotch baking and photography (have I forgotten writing?) Bravo, Leanne!
Thank you Fabio, No you haven’t forgotten.
Laughing with you. Have a great day and week!
😀 😀
Lovely loaves
Thank you.