long-time reader first-time bread-maker

Aha!

I've been charged with folding the sourdough today, as part of my working from home responsibilities.

Did that yesterday.

my nice downstairs neighbours sourced me some strong flour :)

what is a good recipe for starter if you have no yoghurt (i have no yoghurt)

No need for yoghurt at all - just water and flour.
I followed this one blindly at the start of the year, never having baked before:
https://www.theboywhobakes.co.uk/recipes/2019/5/30/how-to-make-a-sourdough-starter

the boy who bakes is us

(can include girls)

that looks like it would work. i have found it a bit easier to get going with rye. (you can still make white and whole wheat loaves with a rye starter.)

The dough is very fluffy! We're going to do half for bread and half for pizza.

second edition of the no knead sourdough (we made half the recipe this time since the last one turned out so gigantic (and flour is hard to find)) is going in the oven shortly

I should have kept a some of Gilberto* last time he came to stay.

*Gilberto is a sourdough starter I look after when my Brazilian friends go on holiday. He is descended from the starter at French restaurant that sadly closed last year.

this made me wonder how old the oldest starter is and of course it's a thing and there are rival claimants and it's possibly 122 years (if this isn't fake)

according to my e5 bread sensei, after about 5 years it doesn't really matter how old it is on a practical level

former ilxor redacted trumped my google fu by finding someone who had made a starter found in an egyptian tomb

i mean with yeast spores found in an egyptian tomb

sarcophagus_juice.jpg

i bet you could make some good WRAPS with that.

request for a hot cross bun recipe accessible to the noob

lol now i have two, direct from two top bakers = mr p.hollywood & mr t.hand

naturally mr hand's is the more advanced, it requires i make BUTTERMILK (but i found out how with a lemon so that's OK)

do any of you bread people know the trick to making sourdough that's actually sour? i've had decent success at making levain bread with no yeast but it never has much of that strong tangy sourdough flavor. looking at recipes online for san francisco sourdough, it appears the trick is either a) using a san francisco sourdough starter bc that has special bacteria in it or b) doing a very long fridge proof/ferment. i've done overnight fridge proofs before and not had that result.

you can fridge a 65% hydration levain for 24 hrs. more acetic acid because of more struggle. then proceed as normal (and do a fridge proof too).

does it make a difference if my starter is already refrigerated? the starter itself smells/tastes very sour

no not really. if it’s very sour smelling that just means it needs to be fed sometime soon.

My last bread was bordering on /too/ sour. My advice is to use a refrigerated starter that’s slightly past its prime (~ week since last feed) a long, slow 24 hour bulk ferment and a 12 hour slow second rise in the fridge (finished on the counter).

lol this is all totally over my head, i love it

"the struggle"

lol that actually came from a note i wrote on the recipe given to me during my e5 'advanced sourdough' class. note was next to the instrux for a cold 24-hr levain build and said in total: 'MORE ACETIC ACID = MORE STRUGGLE'

the struggle is real

my boyfriend found yeast, in for a wild ride

I would love to go back to a world where people who never bake never bake, so I can get some whole wheat flour.

you’ll NEVER BAKE
NEVER BAKE
NEVER BAKE
NEVER BAKE......

this hearty scone

Lol

making HCBs mainly via the recipe tracer went me (no fruit, no nuts, will NOT be using frosting for the cross ffs). is the dough rising? NOT MUCH imo (tho the room is warm and draft-free) but i guess i still have another 45 mins until punch-down, more soon

(i halved all* the amounts bcz 30 buns is a lot when you live alone)

*probably all, maybe

tbh i may have over-kneaded when absorbing the butter "the french way" since i forgot to leave it out and it was cold not soft

lol i absolutely fvcked up the "french way of butter", when i was dividing and shaping them just now i found a huge unabsorbed soft glob of it in the middle of the dough

Sounds delicious! :)

we'll see

Different kind of bread, but I started a batch of injera batter last night.

dough for crosses was too wet and flowed everywhere, shapes are terrible, glaze and colour good tho!

https://files.slack.com/files-pri/TV20059EW-F012CJX6H9N/2020-04-13_17.47.46.jpg

couldn't find any raisins or sultanas when i shopped for these, it does need em really -- but the texture is not bad at all! (this was intricate without being difficult really)

https://files.slack.com/files-tmb/TV20059EW-F01224ZUUPK-27a43b5cd1/2020-04-13_18.07.24_720.jpg

lol awesome plate. those look great!

the laurel's kitchen bread book is quite verbose but usually i think it's helpful - they anticipate the kinds of practical questions you might have and address them right in the recipe, which i feel usually ends up simplifying things rather than complicating them i.e. will i need to do these in batches, what should they look like when i've shaped them, is there something i can use to squash them etc - and most recipes would just say 'form the buns'

yes i mainly stuck with laurel -- but it suggested using icing-frosted crosses instead of authentic white dough strips, so i switched to paul hollywood for them, then couldn't get the snipped-plastic-bag-as-a-piping-device to work (the bags just burst) until i made the cross dough so runny that it wouldn't stay in place

probably i shd have tried the piping out first -- the second batch was a bit better

whoa piping!

They are Turin shroud crosses, very appropriate. Look delicious too.

Icing crosses are all kinds of wrong.

i just baked these tonight:
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020985-cheddar-walnut-gougeres

it was.... not hard! no yeast! no starter! no baking powder! just mixin and cookin! and very freaking good

Nice. I might give those a try!

Something to do with 00 flour other than pizza dough?

I'm using red caputo 00 flour to make the tartine country sourdough, as bread flour is nowhere to be found and i was able to buy a 25k bag of it off Amazon somehow, and it is working really well!

On a related note, how are people storing their massive bags of flour, if they have them? Scared of getting bugs in it somehow...

that's what sifting is for surely :)

a big plastic bucket with a snap-on lid would be ideal imo (i do not have one, but i also don't have 25kg of flour!)

those gougeres look amazing. i'm gonna try them as soon as we can get eggs again.

It seemed like an overinvestment when it arrived - I could barely drag the box into the kitchen - but we're making 4-5 loaves a week, plus pizzas and feeding the sourdough starter, and with doling bags of it out to flour-strapped friends, I might get through it a lot quicker than I'd imagined!

Ah, sifting, of course...

My 25kg is in its sack, still in the cardboard box it was delivered in. It's moved from the front room and is now sitting by the fridge. I've been thinking about getting some kind of airtight plastic bucket/box/bin for it - it could probably safely move to our small, damp and crowded cellar if I did - but haven't gone for it yet.

And same, stevie - It's definitely going down faster than I thought - I was guessing about 6 months, maybe a bit less, but I am baking more than anticipated when I was umming and ahhing about buying it.