Savor the Flavor
You know that fall is approaching when you start baking. Lately the temperature in Chicago was more baking-friendly so I thought it was time for another BBA Challenge dust-off here with a delicious Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche.
I had this next chapter in the BBA challenge on my list for a very long time but only now I got to actually get my hands dirty (literally!): Bagels! Partly because of my quest of finding the highest gluten content flour (14.2%), and partly because of the residual insanity in my life that never seems to clear up. Here is my first adventure in baking Bagels – hope it’ll inspire you.
Since it started, I’ve been wanting to spin off my participation in Nicole’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge – an ambitious project to bake myself through Peter Reinhart’s book with the same name. Finally, I have my hands full of sticky dough up to my elbows. This week’s challenge is Ciabatta Bread, a North-Western (Liguria) Italian invention that literally means carpet slipper because of its typical shape that resembles it.
This was the Happy Day! The day when everything came together. The fun. The Grand Finale. The day you can hug everyone on the street, then get arrested for being weird.
Dear friends, Thought of starting of this first day off 2009 with a live Sourdough Cam showing the growth and live development! How fun this can be? Now, I don’t expect you starring at the sourdough jar for hours, but you can check the progress […]
Le Dough – (Bread Day 2)
A somewhat more complicated day. I started off by taking the sponge out of the fridge and cutting it into rough pieces to help it warm up faster (about an hour). I covered it so it would not crust over. Meanwhile, measured out:
4-1/2 cups flour (unbleached, all-purpose, high gluten)
2 Tsp salt
1-3/4 cup warm water
I know. My mysterious disappearance left some of you wondering if the sourdough process got out of control or I got into depression following the ‘depression’ of the previous sourdough starter. I could say both. As Christmas approached, things seemed to be getting more busier […]
Things looked promising! The 3rd day looked like thing were moving in the right direction. The sourdough starter grew about 1 inch over the indicator line (rubber band). Not as aggressive as during the day before, but given the fact that our night temperature is […]
The one great thing about the blogosphere is that one can actually get in touch with the blog author for advice, tips on a certain subject and get precious direction.
One of these examples is a fellow foodie – Nicole – the author of the fantastic Pinch My Salt blog full of superb recipes, tips ideas and marvelous pics, who had a great photo chronicle on making her own sourdough starter from scratch. Her detailed pics and description inspired me to make my first sourdough starter. If it is a success it will be passed down to my next generation, and probably mention in my will how to share it among my children so they wont fight over it.
Mother Sponge
Creating a starter, also known as Mother Sponge, is a very simple process. You are basically creating a habitat where the already existent yeast (in our case in the flour and maybe in the air), will reproduce happily ever after, by feeding it with a mix of water and flour (un-bleached, all purpose).
Apparently the Mother of all Sponges, lives in San Francisco, CA, where a bacteria named Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis was discovered in the sourdough starters made there, the main culprit for the bacterial multiplication.
And you wonder why real-estate prices are so high over there…
Ingredients
It cannot be more simple. I followed Nicole’s recipe that calls for:
The reason for the whole wheat flour is because it has much more wild yeast than all purpose flour.
I mixed all these and poured the result into a glass jar, where I will be monitoring its progress (or regress), by adding a rubber band that indicates its initial level.
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