I have been boring everyone around me, mostly online of course, with my attempts to make sourdough bread. I have spent a few weeks trying to get a starter started. You mix flour, a little pineapple juice, and a tiny bit of yeast, mix in a bowl and let it ferment. Sounds easy. I had such trouble but now I have starter that knows its way around a ball of dough!
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After trying several methods to get starter, the pineapple juice worked. Over a few days of feeding, I had enough to try to bake with. I removed half of it, fed this at 7am, and by 830am, it had more than doubled in size. The rubber band shows where it was before it started growing.
The rubber band is at the place where it was at 830am in the picture below. I moved the rubber band to mark the spot and after stirring, set it back to bubble some more. At 1030am, it was doubled again. Busy little yeasty beasties.
So I took ¼ cup of the starter, 3 cups of flour and 1 ¼ cups of water, made a nice shaggy dough, kneaded it into a kind of ball and set it on the stove top, near the pilot lights, to rise overnight.
When I check it in the morning, it looked like this.
I kneaded this into a tighter ball, and set it to rise again, for the last time. Then I baked it in a dutch oven for 20 min with the lid on and 40 min without the lid. It smelled good and looked good. See top picture.
When it cooled, I sliced it. Here is what the bacon people call a representative slice.
The sour dough taste was mild but present. As the starter ages, it will take one more flavor.
Tomorrow when I feed it, I will take the discard amount and make crackers with it. There are lots of recipes online to use the discard starter, like pancakes and crackers. You can freeze it and/or dry it and store it for future use or to share. I have some dried starter on order that should make good bread because it is old and when I wake it up, it should have character.
Its been fun. I hope to get better as I go along.