The Cottage Smallholder

My dough's coming along nicely, it's bubbling vigorously and smells like a proper sourdough starter.....very beery aroma.  Another couple of days of adding more flour/water to it, will be baking it on Saturday.

Well, I added more flour this morning.....quite a bit more, to get it to a manageable dough state rather than the loose batter that it was (think I'd added too much water during the week).  Tipped it out onto the floured worktop and used my 2 plastic dough scrapers to fold and turn it, the dough was a beautifully smooth and soft texture.  Put it on a baking tray and left it to rise for another 30 mins, then slashed the top and baked it at 180 deg for about an hour.  It rose and grew very well in the oven.

Just cut a slice to try......the crumb looks good, with the characteristic sourdough holey texture, it was a bit doughy but I think that's just because it was still warm.  It doesn't taste particularly like sourdough, but is a really good tasting bread with a lovely crunchy crust.

In conclusion, I think I need to add less water during the 5 day period, it also needed a bit more salt (I'd only used 1 tsp).  It definitely is one of the best tasting breads I've made and I am going to continue doing it.  I'll do it the same way this next time, using the same ordinary white bread flour but a bit more salt and less water during the subsequent days (so 50g more flour each day, but only about 25 ml or so water rather than the 50 or 60 ml I used this time).  After seeing how that comes out, I'll then try it with a proportion of wholemeal flour, or perhaps some rye flour.