Monday, May 21, 2012

Failed bread

A while ago I tried to make bread. It didn't turn out... Being the blogger that I am, I will post on my sad, sad failure. I was using the recipe for sourdough bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, a very good book on bread baking. 

Clearly I didn't listen to the part of the book that talked about being patient. I think the biggest problem was I didn't let the sourdough starter sit out long enough to get the proper yeast development, and after that I didn't let the bread poof long enough. Our house tends to be on the cool side, so I really need to remember to double any poof time. 

Final bread, very small
 I tend to make brick-like bread, something I was trying to avoid. I think I got everything done correctly to make the bread tasty, it was quite good! But it was dense and a little hard and the crust was very, very crunchy.
Bread pulled apart. Absolutely no bubbles. Dense as a brick
Next time I will be more patient and make plain white bread, though I am tempted by the cinnamon rolls in the book. Very tempted.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like my first attempts at sourdough. I finally had to end up using a recipe that included yeast in the starter and in the bread recipe. Trying to do it the natural way just didn't work for me. Our house is warm so I didn't have that problem. Next time you might try heating your oven at the lowest setting, turning it off, and letting it rise in there. There is also a method of letting it rise overnight in the frig. I've never tried that so I don't know how well it works.

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    1. I think our house is too cold. I just tired cinnamon rolls and they turned out, but it took 10 hours to do the first rise... I guess our house is a lot cooler than I thought! I'll have to try a very long poof on the sourdough bread if my starter is still good.

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