So the past few days have been a baking experiment for me. Well ok, mainly the preparation for a baking experiment. You see I'm trying to make my own home-made spelt bread, since the one in the shops that I can eat is close to a fiver to buy. So why is it taking days of preparation you may wonder. I'm attempting to make it using a sour dough starter, which requires cultivating a natural bacteria culture in flour by regularly feeding it and keeping it in a warm place like a hotpress (aka airing cupboard). The starter allows you to make a nice soft hopefully doughy bread loaf without having to add yeast.
The tricky part is what is the best way to make a sourdough starter? We have 4 or 5 different recipes all of of which differ, not only in how long they leave the starter to develop, what it's made with and subsequently fed, when it's ready to use, how much of the starter to use in the sourdough loaf and how to continue looking after it. How confusing! You'd think it'd be like a sponge or a basic biscuit recipe which is pretty much the same all the time. So as it's my first time making one of these I went for the simplest of the recipes, one of the back of a Dove's farm spelt flour bag which only uses spelt flour and water to make the starter and the final loaf.
The tricky part is what is the best way to make a sourdough starter? We have 4 or 5 different recipes all of of which differ, not only in how long they leave the starter to develop, what it's made with and subsequently fed, when it's ready to use, how much of the starter to use in the sourdough loaf and how to continue looking after it. How confusing! You'd think it'd be like a sponge or a basic biscuit recipe which is pretty much the same all the time. So as it's my first time making one of these I went for the simplest of the recipes, one of the back of a Dove's farm spelt flour bag which only uses spelt flour and water to make the starter and the final loaf.
 |
| Sourdough on day 1 |
