Since I got my Vita-Mix back 2 days ago, I was able to grind some wheat. Yea! I’m still maintaining the starter on white flour since I ran out of rye berries. The quickest bread recipe I use calls for 2 cups of starter. Well, that makes the bread roughly 50/50 white/wheat if I mix it up with whole wheat flour. The dough was very soft, very nice. I gave it 3 rises, twice in the bowl, and the 3rd in a free form loaf. The dough was too soft for a free form loaf; it should have gone into pans. But it didn’t flatten out too much and the bread is still very nice, very soft.
We served up the bread for New Year’s Eve as we watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with the boys. Served with a really good Brie-Bleu cheese and Salome. Mmmmm.
Interestingly, there’s virtually no sourdough flavor, which is fine. I like the flavor and don’t mind a strong sourdough, but this one was not strong. I’m trying to figure out why, just to understand. I could be that it was the same mild flavor that I’m used to, but it was covered by the strong cheese and strong Salome. Or, it complemented those flavors so well that I didn’t recognize it. It also could be that I was feeding this starter a bit more frequently. Mike’s book (see sourdoughhome.com) indicates that feed more frequently, the starter will be faster and milder. I may have just crossed that line to milder by feeding it a little more frequently the day of baking. Dunno.
But I certainly can’t call it a failure. It’s really good bread! I’m not stuck on getting certain flavors out of the bread quite yet. Still just feeling my way through the baking, the predictability of the sourdough, the rise times, the hydration, etc. More interested in controlling crumb and texture than sourdough flavor. But I’m at the point where all the bread is good, so now the rest of the learning just takes time and observation. Might as well enjoy the variations of bread on that path!
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