Since my last post, [Read PART I here if you missed it] I’ve baked even more things! As well as baking sourdough bread, I’m now delving into the world of cake decorating. It’s all so much fun, and my love for baking is growing more and more each day.
Consistency
For the first month and half of baking sourdough, I was having consistently successful results. Lately I’ve been trying some new things and have had some consistent ups and downs in my success. I’ve baked around 40 loaves of bread in about a month and a half, thanks to my friends and coworkers coming back for more. You have to be pretty consistent when you’re in a place that you’re cranking out bread for people every week. Some days when I bake, my loaves turn out great. Some days they’re unfortunately overproofed. Today I think I may have underproofed. It’s all a learning process, and I hope to get it right. It also doesn’t help that the weather is becoming hotter, so things are moving along more quickly than I’m used to.
This was my first loaf of sourdough bread. To be honest, I would say to this day it is still my best loaf. The scoring was pretty, the crumb was great, the flavor was on point, the crust was nice and…crusty…So why don’t I just stick with that recipe and method? Well because I like to complicate things! And I like to experiment and try out different ways of doing things to see what works for me.
I don’t want to get too overly wordy in this post like I did in the last one. “We’re here to see the bread pictures!” Okay, okay. So these are some of my most favorite bread bakes to date:
He looks funny, be he’s my friend
This rye starter has become one of my best friends. He is strong, quick, and consistent. Meet Lazarus. The story behind the name is that around day 5, I accidentally cooked my starter in the oven. After a few minutes of freaking out, I scraped the little bit of goo that was left from the middle of the jar and hoped for the best. After a week or so it was getting active and happy and I baked my first loaf with it. Now I make sure to keep it safe — and I sure don’t put it in the oven anymore