By gosh, I think I have finally figured it out

A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to grow a homemade sourdough starter. I started it with just pineapple juice, flour and water. 

After the first 6 days, I was starting to get discouraged because NOTHING was happening. And if any of you have ever made a sourdough starter, you know how much work and babying it is to get one going. Well, I was about to throw P.J (that's it's name :)  ) down the drain, but I decided to stick it out another day so I could say I gave it a full week.

Well on the morning of the 7th day, P.J, finally started growing. From there, it was even more hard work keeping PJ fed and happy until he was finally ready to be either baked with, or put in the fridge so he can go dormant until I was ready to bake with him.

I tried several recipes for bread and none of them were right. They never rose like they were supposed to and they turned out gray on the top instead of crispy golden brown. When they baked, they spread out instead of up. When we ate them, they weren't your normal bread texture. It was way more dense since there wasn't enough rise in it.

So I gave up on bread for a while.....until yesterday. I was ambicious and tried 2 different recipes. They called for longer rise times and I was very impressed with the result.

Look at these beauties. Just look at their golden crisp crust. Yum Yum.


The loaf on the right probably was the winner in taste and texture of the bread. It had more holes in the bread, which is what I think of when I think of sourdough bread. It was bit tangier in flavor than the other and it didnt have any commercial yeast in it at all. The one on the left called for just 1/8 of a tsp just to give it a little more oomph, but I don't think it needed that push. PJ seemed to pull through on his own just fine.

I got the original recipe from Simply So Good Blog. It is super simple. But since I am using my sourdough starter, I made a couple changes.

3 cups all purpose flour (original recipe called for unbleached, but all I had was bleached all-purpose flour so that's what I used)

1 3/4 teaspoons salt

1 cup starter (my starter is a bit thicker than I would have liked so I added a touch more water)

1 1/2 cups water

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt and starter.  Add water and mix until a shaggy mixture forms.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12 - 18 hours.  Overnight works great.  Heat oven to 450 degrees.  When the oven has reached 450 degrees place a cast iron pot with a lid in the oven and heat the pot for 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, pour dough onto a heavily floured surface and shape into a ball.  Cover with plastic wrap and let set while the pot is heating.  Remove hot pot from the oven and drop in the dough.  Cover and return to oven for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake an additional 15 minutes.  Remove bread from oven and place on a cooling rack to cool.  

 

In her recipe, she mentions using a cast iron pot with lid like a Le Creuset, but I don't have one of those so I decided to try it in my Rachel Ray covered casserole dishes. 

 

The loaves turned out beautiful so I believe as long as you have a dish that can withstand 450 degrees and has a lid to create the steam effect, you should be good.  Happy Baking!!