Looking Good

Well so far, so good. the sourdough starter is still bubbling away like mad, I have been feeding it every day with a small amount of flour and water, It seems happy enough. I set some dough going yesterday about 8 o'clock and have now just knocked it back and put it in a basket with a heavily floured linen tea towel holding it all together. I was beginning to wonder if it was doing anything but when I turned it out of the bowl it had plenty of air bubbles inside, it was still a bit too free flowing for my taste but then again it is only my second attempt at making a sourdough loaf, it's looking a lot better than my first one. Once it's baked I will post a picture.

Second Attempt

A little while ago I set a sourdough starter going then abandoned  it as a bad idea as the loaf I had made with it turned into a brick in the oven, I had kept the starter and gave it a good feed last night, I'm told they almost impossible to kill off.. There were bubbles on the surface this morning,  a good sign that it's still alive and I gave it another feed this morning. I'm hoping that by the time I get home tonight it will all be frothy and ready to use. I want to give it another go as the loaf that I was given when I did my baking course last week was delicious.Well I can but try and see what happens. I will let the world know what happens one way or the other.

Baking Course Day

Wednesday arrived and I had booked the day off, so a lay in started the day off nice and easy followed by tidying up the house. The baking course didn't start until 4.30 so I had plenty of time to potter round doing all sorts of odd jobs that I normally skip don't get the chance to do. So at 4.15 I promptly presented myself at Cinnamon Square, they were very nice and offered any refreshment I wanted. The course was run by an extremely knowledgeable chap called Paul who put us all at ease. Once the other attendees had arrived and sorted themselves out we got straight down to business. Paul took us through mixing the dough by hand using fresh yeast, something I hadn't used before. Having put the ingredients (flour, yeast, salt and some trex) into the plastic bowl provided, then adding the water, weighing it as it gives a more accurate measurement, we then started mixing by hand. Once the ingredients had all formed into a rough dough, we tipped them out onto the table and began to knead them. we kept this up for about fifteen minutes, stretching or slapping it onto the table as desired. The resulting dough was the best I had ever made, we formed it into a small ball and placed it in the plastic bowl, covered it in clingfilm and left it to rise. We then started on a second loaf using wholemeal four, following the same procedure as before, again some of the best dough I had ever made. We then broke for something to eat and a glass or two of wine.While we were eating we had to dash back to the table and knock back the first dough we had made earlier, putting it into tins to rise, the tins were placed into a plastic box and throughout the remainder of the the course we could see the dough rising, there was no need to place them in a warm room or cover them with teatowels just keep them in the box, I presume it stops drafts cooling the dough down in the tins. Paul had made some more dough for us while we had been stuffing our faces in the big mixer. We used this to create a bloomer and several platted loaves, I had no problem with the bloomer or the three strand platted loaf but the four strand got me all confused, fortunatley one of my fellow students had grasped the idea better than me and gave a helping hand. We had also shaped the wholemeal dough and placed it in tins as well. Then came the really fun part, placing our creations into the big oven, really quite straight forward apart from the bloomer, that had to be placed on a peel and slid into the depths of the hot oven, a mixture of ground rice and poppy seeds was used to stop the dough sticking to the peel. Twenty minutes later we were taking hot bread out of the oven, each one of us gasping with delight that what we had been making for the last five hours had turned out so well. we left them to cool down a bit before bagging them up and running off into the night with them, Paul had also given us a Sourdough bread to take home, that tasted even better than the loaves we had just made. So a big thank you to all at Cinnamon Square and especially to Paul for teaching us how to make such good bread. So here are the results!

All set for Wednesday!

For those who have been kept awake assiduously following my blog you will know that I have my first baking course coming up on the 6th of April at Cinnamon Square in Rickmansworth. I'm looking forward to seeing if the way I have been making my bread is correct and also if there are any tips/tricks that I can pick up. I think we are making three different types of bread, though I can't remember what they are at the moment. I know I get to take them away, either to grace the pages of my blog with numourous pictures or to hide the evidence of my failure. This weekend saw my first attempt at making hot cross buns.

Not bad for a first attempt, I'm happy to say they turned out really well, the recipe came from the BBC Good Food Website and I paid attention to the comments left by others. Giving the buns a second rising made all the difference.