Food Challenge

When it comes to cooking, I like a challenge. Actually I think that can be said of most things in my life. I remember when I was working a job for a retail store and my manager’s report to corporate constantly said “Great in all areas. Needs to be challenged” (maybe that was just because he desperately wanted me to be his assistant manager? but I think it rings true even still)

I find these projects and skills that I have a urgent need to learn and conquer. Most times, I do it, check it off the list and move on. Some times it sticks with me. Crochet is one of those challenges that has stuck. I decided to make some blankets for Christmas gifts in 2009 and that begun my crazy obsession with yarn and why I had to get even more creative with our limited storage in our apartment.

Cooking is another one of those things. I love to cook. I especially love to bake. I find myself daydreaming of meal plans and ingredients. I wake up excited about what kind of food I can make that day. I checkout giant cooking books from the library and look forward to grocery shopping at Henry’s Market on Wednesdays for our weekly groceries items. I challenge myself to make meals out of the sale items for the week. It’s a little game I like to play in my own mind, in my own kitchen.

With cooking and baking I find things within the subject to challenge me. My recent challenge has been sourdough bread. One of my good friends, who is also obsessed with all things food, has been telling me that I need to try and make sourdough bread, from scratch. Now, after hearing her stories of the smell and failure of sourdough starter, I wasn’t really in a hurry to begin this challenge so I set it in the back of my mind. At the library a few weeks ago I found this book by James Peterson

It’s a wonderful book with great pictures and tips on baking pretty much anything. In this book I ran across sourdough bread starter and figured I might as well give it a try. So, my journey began…

If you ever decide to take this journey, here are a few tips:

1) It’s going to smell weird. It’s creating yeast, it’s not supposed to smell like roses. If it does smell like roses, you probably did something wrong and should start over.

2) Keep it tightly covered and set the bowl of starter on a place mat or fabric of some kind. Don’t set it on a counter or stove.

3) Don’t open your kitchen window. Try to keep the temperature consistent during the first week of the starter’s life.

4) Do read the recipe fully before starting so you can get your schedule straight for when you can start baking.

5) Make sure to use organic stone ground wheat flour during the first few days of making the starter. I used it the whole time because I wanted to bake whole wheat sourdough.

6) I’ve heard some horror stories of mold growing. If it turns funny colors, throw it out and start over.

I was afraid that the bread was going to be awful especially because it takes a lot of time to get this stuff going. You have to feed and water the starter every day just like a pet. Adam and I do not have pets, nor do we want any.

After about 8 days I was ready to start my recipe for the bread. The starter was finished and I wanted to test it out. I didn’t schedule things quite right and the day that I needed to bake the bread was a bit hectic. I ended up baking it at 10pm that night.

The bread turned out well to my utter surprise. A part of me wanted it to fail so I didn’t have to keep taking care of the starter and another part of me wanted it to be great because I had spent over a week taking care of this thing. The flavor was good and the bread had a nice chew to it. I was a little saddened with the rise though. I think the rise problem was due to a few things that I will play with the next time around. I am going to try these things out to see if I can get it to rise better.

1) Use 1/4 cup more bread flour.

2) Knead the dough a bit longer to shape it.

3) Proof it in a proofing box.

if that doesn’t work

4) Use a combo of starter and commercial yeast.

Here is the end result (Sorry for the lame iPhone camera quality. It’s all I had around when the bread finished)

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