Tuesday 24 May 2011

Sun-dried tomato and cheese loaf with sourdough leaven

My wife found a jar of sun-dried tomato that is expiring in a week and asked me what am I going to do with it. I bought it a few months back to make some bread with it but I completely forgot about it.
After flick through a couple of books and decided to make a sun-dried tomato cheese loaf.
The bread is base on Andrew Whitley's book Bread Matter's Basic Savory Bread Dough, but I use my sourdough starter to make a sponge instead of using fresh yeast. I also added 2g of instance yeast to the final dough to speed up the final rising.

The sponge
1 tablespoon of my sourdough starter
125g Water
75g Strong White Flour
50g Standard Flour

I made this sponge early in the morning before I go to work and leave it on the counter for 10 hours.

The final dough
225g Sponge
225g Strong White Flour
4g Salt
15g Olive oil
1/2 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes
105g Water

The filling.
1/2 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes
pizza paste
grated cheese

My wife help me to put everything in the bread machine at 5:30pm to run the dough cycle so that after work when we finish dinner I can start shaping the loaf.

 Take the dough out of the bread machine and let it rest for 10 minutes and then roll out the dough and put on the filling. Roll the dough into a log and then cut the dough down the center length wise.

Take the two cut pieces and braid them together and put in a pan.

Allow it to rest till double in size.

 Bake for 35 minutes at 190 degress.

The bread taste very good and soft.

Saturday 14 May 2011

Sourdough baguette

The second project for my sourdough is sourdough baguette. Once again I adapted Baking Artisan Bread: 10 Expert Formulas for Baking Better Bread at Home by Ciril Hitz's  formula, instead of using a poolish with yeast, I used a sourdough leaven.


On Friday night I created the leaven.
Leaven
1 tablespoon of my sourdough starter
105g Water
105g Strong Bread Flour


On Saturday night morning mix the leaven with the main dough.
Main dough
200g leaven
180g Strong Bread Flour
100g Water
20g Wholemeal Flour
5g Diastatic malt


Once the main dough is mixed, it was put in a plastic box for bulk fermentation and stretch and fold for 3 times. After 3 hours of bulk fermentation the main dough look like it's ready.




Divided the main dough into 2 small doughs and shaped to 2 baguettes for finally rising.




After about less than 2 hours, it seem they are already ready for the oven.




Baked for 30 minutes and here is the result.



Unfortunately,  my kids don't really like my sourdough bread. I'm not sure if I'll bake them again.

Wednesday 11 May 2011

My first sourdough bagels

Now that my sourdough is live and kicking, i have decided to put them to work. My first project is sourdough bagels.
After searching the web for a few sourdough bagels recipes and didn't find any that really like so I adapt the formula from Baking Artisan Bread: 10 Expert Formulas for Baking Better Bread at Home that I always use.

Leaven
1 tablespoon of my sourdough starter.
125g water
125g Strong bread flour

Main dough
Leaven 240g
Strong bread flour 295g
Water 110g
Diastatic malt 6g
Salt 3g

Day 1
7:30am make the leaven before I go to work
8:00pm mix the main dough with my stand mixer.
8:30pm divide the main dough into 6 portion and shape them into bagels
8:45pm set to prove for an hour
9:45pm Into the fridge for overnight retardation

Day 2
7:30pm remove the bagels from the fridge set let it return to room temperature
8:30pm boil the bagels
8:40pm  into the oven for 20 minutes
9:00pm Bagels are baked.

My Leaven



Friday 6 May 2011

Sourdough starter (day 7), it got a new home.

Today, it still look the same as yesterday. However decided to move it to a new home because my wife complaint that I took my kid's sandwich box.


 Discard some of it and put the rest to it's new home and feed it with 30g flour and 15g water.
After 4 hours you can see it very much alive. :D

I think my sourdough starter is ready to work.

Thursday 5 May 2011

Sourdough starter (day 6)

There isn't much change from day 5. I decide not to feed it today to see how it will go tomorrow.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Sourdough starter (day 5)

It hasn't changed much on day 4.
Anyway I'm going to feed it with 30g water and 30g flour.



Tuesday 3 May 2011

Sourdough starter (day 4)

You can see there is some activity (bubbles) in the starter. It smells like ripped banana and vinegar.

Time to feed another 25g water and 25g flour to it.

Monday 2 May 2011

Sourdough starter (day 3)

After 72 hours, it still doesn't look like much activity but it started to smell like vinegar.
It's about time to  feed 25g water and 25g all purpose flour to my starter.

Sunday 1 May 2011

Sourdough starter

I have made sourdough bread before but it didn't turn out as good as I expected. After all I don't think sourdough breads are really my thing.
A few weeks ago bought some sourdough bagels from Wild Wheat and found that their sourdough bagels are pretty nice. So I decided to give it another go.

This time start out with 25g wholemeal flour and 25g water.

After 24 hours and there isn't much activity with my starter. I think the room temperature is too low. I have to give it another day.