WFMW: Sourdough Success

Baking bread has long been an aspiration of mine. One that I felt that I lacked the time and energy to pursue with a job and young children. However, I recently decided that it was high time that I delved into this area of baking.

Right off the bat, I knew that I wanted to make sourdough bread. My mom used to make it when we were growing up but hasn't in years and years. So, I started reading and researching the way I tend to do. Then I jumped right in and made my starter.

What I learned was that this was not the easiest place to start in the realm of bread baking. I had loaf after loaf that I felt were failures due to what was probably a lazy starter. So I used it up to make some pizza crusts and then made a new starter.

I made one set of loaves using a little bit of commercial yeast in the recipe a couple of weeks ago. I was pretty excited about this.

Then, I found a post on the King Arthur Flour Baker's Banter blog that had me inspired to try it again with no commercial yeast help... just my starter, some water, flour, a little sugar and salt.

LOOK WHAT I DID!!!

So here's the schedule that is based on this post that worked for me:

Saturday

7 a.m. Remove starter from refrigerator.

8 a.m. Feed starter with 1 cup flour & 1/2 cup room temperature water.

6 p.m. Combine 1 cup starter with 1 1/2 cups water and 3 cups flour.

10 p.m. Refrigerate.

Sunday

9 a.m. Add 2 cups flour, 2 tbsp. sugar, and 2 tsp. salt. and knead for a sweet forever.

2 p.m. Shape loaves.

6 p.m. Bake at 350 - 400 F for 30 minutes or so.

7 p.m. Enjoy!

This is what worked for me. For more Works for me Wednesday posts, go visit Kristen at We Are THAT Family. She's starting to bake bread, also.