Bagels FTW!

Sourdough bagels, that is.

Had one this evening with dinner.

Had a decent dinner, so was feeling quite full when I was done.

But I still wanted another bagel...

Sourdough #3

I'm getting the hang of this...

This week, I didn't want to waste a lot of flour/water by feeding the starter every day, so I fed it on Sunday night & plonked it in the fridge. Left it there until Friday, when I pulled it out and give it another feed. It had developed plenty of fine bubbles over the five days, but not quite as many as it had previously developed in a 12-hour period. 4-5ºC will slow things down a bit, which was the intended outcome.

After a day out on the bench (in some much cooler weather for Brisbane, ~15-20ºC), it was nice and bubbly again, so I gave it another feed to bulk it up on Saturday night, and made the loaf on Sunday morning.

It's still a bit time-consuming to make a sourdough loaf, but it's satisfying at the same time. Flour, water, and salt were the only ingredients, plus some sesame seeds scattered on the top. (Yes, I remembered the salt this time!)

So, without any further ado, here's loaf #3, 100% pure sourdough.







Two comments:
1) you've probably noticed I baked this one in a tin - thought I'd try it out, see how it goes - the shape is much better for toast / sandwiches, but maybe I'll buy a narrower tin, this one is pretty wide, and a higher-but-narrower loaf would be even better;
2) you've probably also noticed why it is sourdough loaves are usually slashed on the top - that oven spring is wicked! :-D

Tastewise, it's nice bread - a bit 'heavier' than commercial bread (this loaf was over 1kg, compared to a commercial loaf of bread that's a bit bigger weighing in at 700g), but with a nice texture and chewy crust. Makes great toast. A very mild flavour on this one, though, not very sour.

Further Adventures in Bread-making

Sourdough FTW!




Absolutely delicious, and, if I do say so myself, pretty bloody good for a first attempt, even if the shape isn't quite there.

Sourdough loaf #2 worked out pretty well, too - if a little bland, because I forgot to put in the salt. D'oh!



And here's a pic of the starter. Flour, water, and time. That's all! :-D

Here's the dough for the first loaf, being folded after rising, just about to go into the floured banneton.

Further adventures in breadmaking

Well, I got the dough out of the bowl, folded it (though I forgot to add the extra sprinkle of flour, oh well) and put it in the casserole dish to prove for an hour or so.

I ended up adding at least half a cup of extra wholemeal flour, and the dough was still, in my opinion, too wet & sticky. Next time, I'll go with even more flour. I'll try weighing it out, too, as suggested in the second video on Breadtopia. The proportions aren't quite right.

Ah, well. If it's like the first no-knead bread I made, it'll still be delicious and tasty, just not quite right. :-D We'll see in an hour or so.


Update:

Well, here it is! Still not quite right - I think the dough was too wet, plus I probably should have let it cook a little longer, as I put the pot into a cold oven rather than a pre-heated one - I adjusted the cooking time a little, but not enough, I think.

Still very tasty, though! :-D




You'll notice in this shot you can see where I folded a bit too much flour into the dough just before putting it in the pot... :-D Plenty of large voids in the bread, though. The biggest problem is not eating too much of it at one sitting! It goes really well with jam. Especially when it's still warm out of the oven.

Ok, another bread is brewing...

I've got another no-knead bread fermenting. This time, I've done the basic no-knead bread as depicted in the videos on Breadtopia. Mix up some flour (about a cup and a half of wholemeal, two cups of white) with a quarter teaspoon of instant yeast, a teaspoon and a half of salt, and a cup and a half of water.

The instructions say to leave it ferment for 18 hours. I mixed it up at about 3pm this afternoon, so it should be well and truly ready for the next stage by the time I get up tomorrow morning. Then, a bit of folding (but not kneading), some proving, and it's in to the oven.

I will, of course, post some photos and taste reports tomorrow morning. :-D

We'll probably try it out when Anf gets home. She's going in a beginner's triathlon tomorrow morning. Yeah, I know, crazy exercise stuff... ;-)

Third time lucky?

Ok, here's today's bread attempt.

This is a conventional loaf (half white flour, half wholemeal).

I think it turned out ok, although the bottom is a tiny bit overdone.

The funny shape is thanks to the stoneware casserole dish I cooked it in - the bread expanded during cooking and completely filled the dish!

Anyway, going to slice it up & try it out shortly... :-D

Addendum:
The bread has been sliced & tested. Pretty good, even if I do say so myself!
I figured out why it's a little overdone on the bottom. I didn't read the cooking instructions properly, did I... "Bake at 240ºC for 10 minutes, then reduce to 180ºC. Bake for 30-40 minutes". I didn't notice anything beyond the "240ºC" bit... D'oh! Ah, well, still came out ok, lucky I used the casserole dish, or it would have been rather crispy...



And here's a pic of the stoneware casserole dish I baked it in. Thanks for the wedding present, Cathy! It's been sitting in the cupboard for eight years, but it's had a workout the past few weeks! :-D

Baking, part deux

After last weekend's efforts with the no-knead bread (delicious, but the proportions weren't quite right) I went looking for other bread recipes during the week (ok, so I was killing time at work... ).

I found myself a recipe for a wholemeal loaf from this site. It's not bad - very, very easy to make. You simply mix the ingredients together to make a dough, let it rise in a greased baking tin for 30 minutes (or silicon pan in my case), then put it in the oven & bake for about 40mins.

The resulting loaf, pictured below, was absolutely delicious. It needed just a little more baking time, though, being a touch too moist in the middle. I'm going to try baking one of those in a casserole dish next time, like the other no-knead bread, and see how the crust comes out.





As you can see by the last pic, though, the silicon pan wasn't such a huge hit... a little too soft on the sides! Cooks well, though. :-D

An experiment

So I found a recipe online for no-knead bread, and thought I'd try it.

Here's a pic of what it looked like after baking:


The verdict:

• Absolutely delicious!
• Very little effort involved
• The recipe I got off the net ended up having waaaaaay too much water, and not enough flour. By a long shot. I added an extra half a cup of flour (which is a lot to add) and it was still too wet, really. Don't really know why, maybe american flour is really, really dry or something?
  

Gonna try a wholemeal loaf next. Supposedly the recipe I found only needs 30min of proving, and 30-40min of baking. It involves kneading, but that can be therapeutic. :D