Sourdough

 It must be weeks ago now when I first began experimenting with sourdough, but as it's so slow to make I've only actually baked two lots. The first batch didn't really work as you have to leave the dough to rise twice, and the second time nothing happened. This seems to be a regular occurrence with my bread which up until now i've been blaming on the cold weather, but i'm beginning to wonder whether it's actually just something i'm doing wrong!
Sourdough is basically a really rustic bread which is made using natural yeast; to 'get' this you have to make a starter mixture of flour, water and a grated organic apple (I used Paul Hollywood's recipe from his book 'How To Bake'). This then has to be left in a sealed container (you can see mine on the left) for a few days, and then 'fed' by throwing away half of the mixture and adding more flour and water. This whole process takes a couple of weeks, and once you have an active starter it will need to be fed every 3 days, or every time you've taken some away to use. Instead of throwing away half of the mixture it would be lovely to give it to someone in a jar to carry on the 'chain', but I don't know anyone who would use it!

To make dough 500g of the starter must be mixed with strong white bread flour, water and salt. This is kneaded for 5-10 minutes (the dough is super stretchy!) then left to rise for around 5 hours until doubled in size. Here was my problem; it must be ideally 22-24°C, but my kitchen is nowhere near that. So I set up a polystyrene 'cage' for the dough to prove in and hung a heat lamp above it, which actually did work at this stage so my dough (left) did double in size.

 After the 5 hours, you have to turn the dough out and knock the air out of it, then shape it into a round loaf and place it in a proving basket or on a baking tray, on top of a cloth covered in flour. A proving basket is better because the dough spreads out lots when it's on a baking tray and doesn't retain the loaf shape very well. Last time I didn't use enough flour and the dough stuck to the cloth and got over everything in the washing machine, so be liberal with the flour! Also cover the top of the dough in flour. Place this in a clean plastic bag, and leave to double in size again; this takes 10-13 hours supposedly.

 Here's what my dough looked like after 9 hours. It had the heat lamp over it at around 22°C, but as you can just about see it's quite flat and not really risen looking. I think it might have been over proved because it was wrinkly, so I re-shaped it and left it for another 5 hours (Paul's advise, from the book). I think because of the lamp it also formed a bit of a hard 'skin', so I peeled this off and threw it away. To be honest this didn't really change much, so I thought what the hell and baked it anyway because it was lunchtime and I was hungry!

Unfortunately because the dough didn't rise enough I was left with a very flat loaf, but it did taste nice! This is what happened last time I tried to make sourdough, although that time I didn't use a heat lamp and the dough didn't rise at all over the second proving time. This is definitely a loaf I need more practice with, but be aware that it uses a LOT of bread flour to make, mainly because you have to keep feeding the starter. It's still really exciting to make something from the most basic ingredients though.