Sourdough Bread!

So, yes, it has been a week or so since I said that I would post the results of my sourdough bread.  I seem to be making myself a bit busy at the moment with all the new things I'm trying and not much time to do it all in!  So here goes nothing....

I'll show you some photos of what happened to the starter before I made the bread.

Day 4 (Aug 24th)  - Looking good but hasn't doubled in size yet.

Day 5 (Aug 25th) - Going well, not quite doubled in size in 24 hours.

Day 6 (Aug 26th) - I meant to take the photo before I took out most of the starter, so that is why there is only a bit left in the jar.  Still going well.

  

Hello again!

I just wanted to do a quick update on the sourdough starter.  The first two days it didn't do much, but on third day it had already grown a bit in volume and there were bubbles forming in the middle.  Here is a picture of the progress so far...

I took all the pictures before I added more flour and water.

Day Two - Not much change

Day Three - A bit of grown in volume, some bubbles in the middle and had a fruity smell.

Day Four - More growth, more bubbles and a fruity/fermented smell.  Also, after day four, instead of just adding equal parts of water and flour, you take out all the starter, minus one tablespoon, and add double the amount of flour a water.  I'll be doing this for a few days.

Amazing isn't it!  I'm so excited about this!  I can see why people call this a 'plant'.  You feed it and it grows!  As long as I don't start talking to it..... :)

Thanks for reading and I'll make a similar post in a few days.  Once this starter is a week old, I will wait one week before making another post about it.  By then (two weeks after starting the starter), I should be able to bake some bread!  Yah!  One this this process is teaching me is patience.  Which is always a good thing to learn I reckon.

Cheers!

Sourdough!!

I love food!  I love making food!  So my first creative attempt is making a sourdough starter.  I love eating sourdough bread, and I recently started really enjoying make my own bread, thanks to owning a Thermomix!  So here's a bit of how I started.

First I simply googled sourdough and Thermomix.  Of course you can make sourdough without a Thermomix but with my TM I am able to grind my own grains to flour and kneed the dough.  So after a bit of googling I found a few good sites with step by step, detailed instructions, with pictures.  I like detailed instructions!  And pictures!  The one blog that I'll be trying to follow is http://sourdough.com/blog/sourdom/beginners-blog-starter-scratch.  But I will be tweeking the starter recipe a bit.  Instead of using white and rye flour, I only using rye.

Second I found a large jar, boiled it in water for 10 mins, and then mixed the flour and water in the jar with a spoon (also boiled in water).  The idea is that you start with clean utensils so that no bugs or anything will affect the starter.

Lastly I placed the jar in a warm part of the house.  I'm going to have to experiment with this to find which will be the best spot.  For now it is next to the kettle, near two windows.  Since it's the winter time, I'm expecting it might take longer for my stater to work but that's fine!

Over the next week or so, I will be 'feeding' my starter every day or two with equal parts of water and flour (I'll be using spelt flour which I will freshly grind each day).  I will take pictures every day or two so I can see the progress.  I should start seeing bubbles soon as things start to ferment.  If you want to know more of the background of how sourdough works, have a look at the webpage I posted earlier in the post.

Keep in mind that I am new to the whole blogging, sourdough thing so I will be learning as I go!  If there is anyone out there who makes their own sourdough, or who would like to try, feel free to comment or ask any questions.  We can help each other out!

Cheers,
Ashes : )

New beginings...

So I've never written a blog before and although I've always loved reading other peoples blogs, I never thought I would have enough to say or to share to start my own.  Until today.  Nothing major has happened and I wouldn't say my life is anything interesting in particular.  I just wanted to have a place to share my thoughts and things that I have created or want to create.  I believe that everyone has a creative side in them, but how we choose to demostrate that is going to be different.  There are lots of things I'd love to do to be creative but I just can't seem to get started!  I thought that if I started a blog, it might just help keep me accountable to exploring my creative side.  Even if only one person ever reads this (at least one person better!), at least I will have done something I have always wanted to do, be creative!  I'm going to keep this blog fairly simple, and probably not overly organised, but I hope whoever read this will be inspired to discover their creative side!

So here is to new beginnings and to being creative!