I had just fed it an hour or so ago, making it thicker in the process by adding less water than usual, and when I came back to it just now to toss it, there was a distinct sour tinge. I tasted a little of it, and it was definitely sour. Still not much activity, but I'm going to let it go for another day and see if anything comes of it. In the meantime, I'm going to make a poolish either this afternoon or tonight, I think.

Looks like your starter was liquidy like pancake batter in the first post.

Yes it was ... a bit thicker. I think it can be easy not to forget this isn't breadmaking dough but the starter and there miight be a natural urge to make it thicker than it should be, Using wholemeal makes it dryer. I've made a fair amount of sourdough using borrowed starters this was just my first attempt at my own.

Have you got some french bread perforated tins? If you are a crust rather than dough person then getting into the bagguette habit is really worthwhile. I always thought that French bread would not really be attainable at home but it sure isn't. My favourite bread is certainly bagels followed by crunchy baguette but I also love blending and experimenting. I really love flatbreads ... it's alink acrosss all of us I guess who cannot afford or practically produce long baked breads.

I've asked the mod to edit the thread title to accomodate all things home made bread ...including flatbreads .. perhaps even bread machine et al.

I tossed the starter and used my poolish.

I think I might have ruined it a bit, because I made a whole wheat loaf...and after adding flour and kneading I remembered that this makes for a very dense loaf that will have issues rising. We shall see. The dough ball is in a bowl in the oven with a towel over it to rise for a few hours now.

I forgot to take photos. :(

Why don't you master plain flour loaves first then go onto variety flours?

:D

Because I saw the bag of whole wheat flour and thought, "Oooh! Whole wheat loaf!"

This was pre-coffee. :)

I have a friend who has had sourdough in his family for decades. I didn't even know it worked like that.

Well, the finished product was just barely bread. It was the sort of ultra-dense loaf my grandma used to make (though she usually put nuts and raisins in hers). But, it still tasted pretty good hot from the oven with some butter. :)

I'm going to make another batch this weekend. This time, I'm going to stick to a basic recipe. uk1, what's your standard poolish recipe?

edit: I think I might slice this loaf into very thin slices and bake them into crackers. It'll be sort of like those Wasa/crispbread crackers.

It is really easy. 100ml (gms) of water 100gms of plain white hard bread flour say 3 gms of instant dried yeast, mix with a fork in the bowl you'll use for mixing with a shower cap on it. Leave overnight.

This is for loaves not baguettes and is for 600gms (200 gms of poolish + second day ) 250gms of flour + 150 gms of water of finished dough ie two very small loaves with lots of crust.

The following day you will want it to end up with say 70% hydration.
So to the above mix add 250gms or so of flour (my favourite is a blend 180gms of white and 35 gms each of wholemeal and rye. Add 140 ml of water perhaps another gm or two of yeast o one side and say 6 gms of salt on the other. Mix it for say 5 minutes, let it rise, once risen envelope folds.

If you make a steam oven as I mentioned earlier and pictured again below - you'll have a couple of small crusty loaves with a real sheen. And when you buy a baguette tin I teach you to make baguettes better than 99% 0f those you've ever eaten.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...2F8FA1EB_1.jpg

If you add some onion/nigella seed it will look like this and look at the open sour-dough looking texture on the second loaf. This is a poolish started loaf and not sourdough.


http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...53271AA4A7.jpg

A proper cheats steam oven.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...7373F5540B.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...L._SL1500_.jpg

Thanks! It'll be my project for this Saturday/Sunday.

It's basically the same recipe you posted a long time ago, right? I just found it:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/20518320-post7.html

Yes, but i didn't have the heart to tell you to use the search and dishearten you.

:D

I feel that people making bread, the best thing they can do is forget about all the recipes you read and learn about the underlying principles. Once you get a feel for those everything falls into place. Like simple hydration rates. How the more water the better the bread. The less yeast and longer development the better the flavour. The effect of some initial steam. The Love of Bagels! The principles are better than prescriptions ie recipes.

Once you get the principles keep a running spreadsheet with the basic loaves you make. Every time you make an adjustment that was better update the spreadsheet. Also if like me every loaf starts with a poolish, then the spreadsheet calculates the amount of flour you add on the 2nd day to achieve the finished hydration rate you seek.

There's no law against keeping some poolish in the fridge so that on any day you've got a bowl of flavour to start it with. The longer it's in the fridge the better the loaf of the day will be. i
I can't wait to see your first loaf.

:)

I decided I didn't much like my attempt yesterday, so I made it into crackers. Sliced thin, brushed with olive oil, and baked at 400F (what's that, like 195C?) for about 35 minutes until browned and crispy. They're great!

You've given up - haven't you! You've gone all "disheartened" :eek:

Listen here ... just because you had all that anticipation and then disappointment with the sourdough starter doesn't give you a viable excuse to shrug and walk away. You are in exactly the same point as I have been.

Think of the poolish/biga as being the cheats sourdough. But as it happens ... I really prefer it. You can develop flavour and character and it always works. And you don't need baby sitters when you go away. Ignore the extremists and listen to your dough buddy.

No excuses. I want to see a loaf of bread made and posted in the next 5 days or you're in detention every night for the coming week and they'll also be no television or Gameboy or tweeting of facebook. And I'll take your mobile phone away.

Come on ... no excuses. Man up! Don't be a Pillsbury. Once you get your first good loaf and realise how easy it all is you'll not be going back.

:)

Oh, I haven't given up! I was going to make a poolish on Saturday and bread on Sunday. But I think I will wait to make my next sourdough starter until I move to Maine in the next few months. I figure there will be more and better yeast floating around at sea level by the pristine Maine coast than there will be 22 floors up in Queens. :)

On the other hand, maybe I'll just try again in a week or two...and the crackers are really good.

Update: I have a poolish doing its thing, per your instructions, uk1. It's been about 6 hours and it has a pleasantly yeasty aroma. I'm going to use it in bread tomorrow. Do I need to feed it any? I'm leaning to no, since you haven't mentioned it, but I don't want the yeast to starve/eat all the gluten. Maybe I'll give it a small feeding for overnight.

Great.

You don't do a thing with it. You don't need to touch it, feed it, water it, or even mix it at all once made. It's only job is to contribute to the rise and add some maturity of flavour. :D

Just add that and a few more grammes of yeast to the main dough batch. The further ahead of when you need the bread and the longer you can wait the better, although not an awful lot of difference. Just be a bit more frugal with the yeast and / or let it do it's first prove in a cooler room. If you want it fairly soon then no problem at all just reverse it a gramme or two more of yeast and a warmer spot.

Flour is so cheap I go through phases where I just get into a ritual of doing a mix of poolish during an evening visit to the kitchen and then mix it the following morning into a dough into the same bowl I used for the poolish in my Kenwood.

If you can take it to a high hydration great. Mix it longer in prep for first rise, which makes it easier to handle, you'll see a more glistening and glutinous surface - then use envelope folds for the final proved shape. If you are making a long bread like a baguette, repeat the envelope folds a few times between 10 to 20 minute rests three or four times or so and don't be scared of trying to stretch the envelope folds in the same direction in the last couple of folds in a way that makes the bubbles more likely to be length way bubbles rather than lateral bubbles. Put the finished shaped bread to rise on a tin and put the whole thing either under a tea towel or in a bin liner. Don't over fold. Rustic is misshapen bread with uneven bubbles. Over mixed and handled will be more cakey. The flavour is in the bubbles oddly ... as much as the dough. Remember the obvious. If you like the crust more than the dough make smaller longer loaves rather than one big one. Just forget all the sense of angst you had with the sourdough and relax. Nothing is likely to go wrong but you'll soon get to learn the principles of the relationships between the five simple ingredients, ie flour, water, yeast, time, and heat and getting a feel for how those five simple elements interact and play is more important then than recipes.

Looking forward to seeing the first loaf.

:)