Sour dough bread from scratch : Experimentation

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The skins lived in a bowl, which we sat in a warm dark spot on top of the cupboards in the kitchen.

Peel twenty apples
Around the eight day mark, Gary reckoned he could smell a yeasty odour. The next day I could smell it too, wafting through the house.


After ten days the skins were browning and the water had a dusty look.
I decanted of the liquid in to a second bowl, mixing in a couple of cups of plain white flour.
The bowl returned to it's perch in the kitchen for another couple of days.


First loaf

Apple skins after ten days
It was time to make our first loaf and ingredients were dumped into the bread maker.
After four hours the resulting slice of loaf had a dense crumb, and chewy crust.
Perfect for toasting.
Not quite as tasty as I'm used to from Sour Dough but that could be due to the immaturity of the Forment.

To feed the ferment, I mixed up a flour and water paste into the gloopy puddle by hand.
It felt strange. Not like anything else I've cooked with before. It dripped more like slime from the bottom of a pond.


Decant liquid and feed with flour

Second loaf

For our second loaf we were looking for a lighter crumb so we increased the yeast and added sugar.

Baked for a bit longer to crisp up the crust.
We finding that the loaf compacts as it cools. It's light and full of air pockets when fresh out of the oven but becomes much more dense after a several hours.

A comparison

We discovered a pre-packaged Sour Dough mix for bread machines.
Mixed it up as a comparison to our 'from scratch'

After two days the 'forment' should
look foamy and smell strongly of yeast
Bakels bread mix, Sourdough
http://www.nzbakels.co.nz/

Nice and light. There was a hint of that sour dough flavour. Not very filling though.
General consensus was that we preferred our 'from scratch' effort.

Third loaf

I ran out of white flour and was forced to bring forward the wholemeal flour experiment.
A tablespoon of olive oil was also mixed in.

Wholemeal added a more earthy flavour to the mix.
bake into bread
Still really dense.
Oil seemed to add to the crunch of the crust.
The loaf was extremely filling

The ferment is beginning to strongly perfume the kitchen.
We leave it for two days to brew, and I've taken to mixing it up after 24 hours to prevent a rubber crust from forming.
The wholemeal adds a savoury taste and makes great toast smeared with Vegemite or bacon and eggs

Forth loaf

Decided to change the bowl that the Forment was living in. It was getting a bit of a manky crust forming around the inside.
Felt like I was cleaning out a bird cage.

RESULT!
Back to the white flour and best effort yet. Added some oil, and the loaf rose to highest level so far. Smooth dome on top but I miss the large cracks that have been splitting the dome so far.

Sour dough bread from scratch : Result!














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