Our Daily, sourdough, bread

Our Daily, sourdough, bread

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.

Our Daily, sourdough, bread
My first load

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.

Our Daily, sourdough, bread

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.

Our Daily, sourdough, bread

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?

Our Daily, sourdough, bread

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.

Our Daily, sourdough, bread

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.

Our Daily, sourdough, bread

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.

Our Daily, sourdough, bread

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45 Comments

    1. 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.

  1. 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.

    1. 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.

  2. Your bread looks fabulous, Leanne. I wanted to hop on a plane and come right over. πŸ™‚ 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.

    1. 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.

    2. Wow! How are you all coping financially? We have so many that have lost their businesses, their livelihood.

    3. 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.

    4. 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. πŸ™‚

    5. 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.

    1. 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 KhΓΌrt and enjoy your bread.

    1. 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.

  3. 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.

    1. 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.

  4. You have great and quality contents. Dont fail to check out my blog and share to your friends. Happy blogging!πŸ’―πŸ’―πŸ’₯

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