Semolina and wholewheat sourdough

 I love finding new items and ingredients for the pantry. A couple of days ago I purchased a bamboo bannaton from the bakery in Oatlands, imported from Germany and is used for proofing my bread ...it's used to make the pretty spiral on the outside of your round loafs.

 Both semolina and wholeground white flour came from Callington Mill in Oatlands.

The semolina sourdough recipe came from Yoke Mardewi's Wild Sourdough book....it was terrific..the crust tasted like malt and caramel..a big tick!

Pontville Desem take two

 Sourdough Desam loafs, made just perfect, tasted wonderful, cut into thin slices and dipped in olive oil and pinenut dukkah

 Apple and homegrown strawberry strudel

Potato gnocci served with a sage and butter sauce and a pesto herb garnish.

A very busy day in the kitchen last friday...could it be we were having guests?

Sourdough number five

White Sourdough, desem bread...1.2 kilo's of flour for these two babies! As you can see the first loaf didn't last long out of the oven. this bread has an excellent flavour and I'll definitely will make it again once I can get a hold of more organic white flour. The recipe can be found here read through it carefully, I didn't and missed some important points but as you can see the bread was very forgiving.

Pig made an excellent basil blue vein and olive oil mix, that he brushed on top of the bread, which had been toasted.

A white spelt

 Week four and my 4th sourdough bread.  I really wasn't up to baking another loaf on the weekend but the starters looked a little on the crappy side..I'm still not sure weather I have to toss 200 gm out and replace it with another 100g each of flour and water if I'm not going to use the 200g to make bread....or can I add the 100g of water and flour to the starter to increase it's volume??
After a bit more research on the internet I've still no answer to this but I did find that I could change my liquid starter into a drier dough starter...making it easier to look after as it can remain "unfed" in the fridge for longer. so I've experimented with the white starter. I aslo read some very exciting methods of feeding starters..pineapple juice, crushed grapes and beer lees..this is all very inspiring...I love this side of baking where you can experiment with odd ingredients! So with my new found inspiration I went and made a white spelt bread using my wholewheat starter...and I have to say the best so far.

I tried a new mixing method of where all the wet ingredients are hand mixed first and then you add the flour a little at a time...as it was a warm day I only let the first rise last for 5 hours to which the dough had already risen almost to the top of the bowl...after turning him out and folding him into the tin I left him to rise a second time over night...first thing yesterday morning he was baked.

Last night he was almost all consumed with cheese and last years vegetable pickles! YUM.

date and walnut sourdough

This was the third sourdough I've made. The flavour was a lot deeper more like a rye bread. The recipe was the same as I used below..just added the fruit and nuts before folding and shaping it for the tine. Very nice with blue vein cheese and quince paste...home made of course!
So what will I make this week end...maybe a white sourdough as one of the wholewheat starters has been slowly converted to a white starter.
So stay tune...

Second time around

Well it worked..I left the dough to rise for 24 hours and it looked amazing this morning.
I poped him into his tin and let him rise for another hour and them into the hot oven he went.

Ingredients

150g organic white flour
400g wholemeal wheat Spelt flour
20g sea salt, ground finely
350ml water
200g sourdough starter made from 1:1 spelt flour and water

What to do

Combine the white flour, wholemeal wheat speltflour, salt, water and sourdough starter in a large bowl. Mix until a just combined.
Rest for 20 minutes.
Air knead for 5 minutes on a lightly flour dusted table.

Place in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap or damp tea towel. Make sure tea towel doesn't dry out.
Place in a cool place for 24 hours until mixture rises slightly.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Shape the dough by folding the edges over once. Place in a bread tin and leave for an hour to rise.

Score the dough with a sharp knife. Bake at 240°C for 35 minutes. Reduce heat 180°C and bake for a further 10 minutes. Transfer the bread to a wire rack to cool for 30-60 minutes.

recipe is based on Spelt flour recipe from the Gourmet Farmer

Day 7

It's day 7 for my sour dough starter and everything Jamie Oliver wrote about he's 7 day starter has been spot on...right down to the smells, and bubbles!

 

Last night the little fella actually rose quite high..so I knew he was working. This morning he collapsed a bit but was still frothy and mousse like....and ready to be turned into bread...I used a recipe from the "Gourmet Farmer" however as I really love air kneading...I decided to slap the dough around for 5 minutes and rest it for 4-6 hours....or maybe a day...we'll see how it goes.

 

This dough is more wholewheat spelt flour and only a small amount of organic white flour. Here we see our dough before kneading.

After air kneading....what a difference!....As for the rest of the starter I added another 100g of spelt and water...now I'll just leave him to ferment and then pop him in the fridge. He'll need to be fed again in 4 days.

So with all my free time it's off to play in the studio...

A Second Start

Start again!! really good instructions on making and keeping your starter is so hard to find. I've been doing a bit of research online and found a few good youtube demo's but the best place to date, surprisingly was Jamie Oliver's website, There he writes about a seven day starter recipe...so this is what I'm going to follow.
I really wanted to use the recipe from a book I purchased last year, 'Wild Sourdough' by Yoke Mardewi, beautiful photographs and feel to the book..the bread recipe's are wonderful but the information for making the 'starter' was very limited and was not the right starter that she used for most of the recipes in the book...she made a liquid starter with a 1:1.5 ratio of flour to water and most of the recipe's use 1:1 ratio of flour to water...which is not a liquid starter...being a novice at making sourdough and the price of organic flour you really don't want to keep experimenting and stuffing up..you want to get it right.

So here goes my second attempt...it's day 5 for my starter and I've already tossed out 200g of starter and replenished it with 1 cup of flour to 1 cup of water.....

I used a electronic scale to measure accurately how much starter I had and how much I was removing.

I did read somewhere that the starter I'm removing can be used for bread making..so to experiment I made a simple white sourdough with my spelt four starter... pain au levain

  

 Weighed and mixed all the ingredients...

just mixed it enough to make a ball of dough..It was then left to rest for 20 minutes
And then the fun started..air kneading..this involved lifting and slapping the dough onto the table for 5 minutes...the change in the dough's appearance and texture was amazing!

Very silky and elastic...which is just what you want....it was then left to rise for 6 hours...which was time well spent painting and making dolls..:)

Did the dough rise after all this time...maybe hard to tell...feeling frustrated...but still the dough looked and smelt sweet...so I continued on, after all it was only an experiment...after placing the dough into its tin and leaving it to rise in a warm oven for another 2 hours...it was late evening by now.....not much change had happened...but I baked him anyway...and here he is he may not have risen and weighs a tonne but he tastes pretty dam good...I call him "The Pontville Brick'

see how he almost resembles the stones in the wall....he was very yummy and went well with my home made seville marmalade!

Off to add 100g of flour and 100g of water to the starter...should have close to a 600g less liquid starter.

A new starter

It's been far too long since I've posted here..lots of changes for the Pig and Duck this year. We've moved house..no longer are we close to the city of Hobart we have moved to the country, a 4 acre block with a new garden and orchard to play in, new bird discoveries to make..have already spotted European Golden Finches and Falcons. Echidna's waddling about, wallabies in the distance and a dog called Ralf that is soon becoming good buddies with our cat Ned.
We are also on tank water something completely new to me and saving water will be an interesting challenge with our gardening, cooking and showers. Fortunately our hot water is free..powered by a solar system...the whole house is solar passive, a cement floor and acts as a thermal mass as the sun moves across the  north facing double glazed windows.

We also have a new kitchen and I'm hoping to get a lot more cooking done than in the old place..the stove there never browned my cakes and muffins I always had to finish them off under the grill...so with a brand new stove and living 35 minutes drive away from Callington flour mill, what better way to start my new life here in the country than to journey into the art of sourdough bread..and to start my voyage three days ago I made my first starter it has just started to ferment.

To make the starter I used 150 grams of wholemeal spelt flour and enough water to make a sloppy pancake batter. Left in a warm place, like a thermal mass concrete floor! Tomorrow I'll probably will need to "feed" it with 1:1 flour and water...I'll need 500gms of starter to make my first sourdough loaf.