My first step towards ethical eating is to start making my own bread. Properly. No edible paperweights.
If I let myself regularly visit a bakery I will spend a fortune and neither of our waistlines will thank me but if I make my own I can at least manage the cost aspect. Keeping a sourdough starter seems the simplest and cheapest option and the most satisfying for the baker. Well that’s assuming I get it working!
I opted to start with rye flour because it’s apparently a bit kinder and after feeding my experiment with flour and water for 9 days it seemed to be going pretty well. Yeasty bubbles and everything. On day 9 I decided it looked ready to bake with so I put 200g of my starter with 100g wholewheat flour and 300g strong white flour, roughly 235ml warm water and 1tsp salt. I kneaded and left to prove for a couple of hours. When I went to bed it hadn’t risen much at all so I put it in the fridge over night, took it out in the morning and left to rise while I was at work. When I got home it had risen although still not spectacularly but I figured by that point it was probably in danger of overproving so I stuck it in the hottest oven for about 30 minutes and above is what came out.
The flavour was good and it was edible but very doughy, almost as though it hadn’t baked long enough. I don’t think that would have helped though, suspect it was either my starter wasn’t ready yet, bad proving or I didn’t knead enough. So my starter is in the fridge and will be back out next week for more feeding until I get this right!
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