Sourdough Starter

Baking bread is rewarding, but ultimately you will ask yourself "what can I do to really challenge myself?"

Ultimately the answer you will come to is - SOURDOUGH!

Bread books are filled with all sorts of starters, and some even describe how to cultivate your own local starter. I've done this, but nothing can beat the original Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis.

My friend DragonCoder sent me this link for Free, live pioneer-era sourdough starter and HangerMike pointed me to http://www.sourdoughbreads.com/.

I went ahead and spent $9 to purchase the authentic San Fransisco Sourdough starter I'm currently using. Sourdough is a live culture so it takes a bit of time to get used to it's feeding schedule.

For more information I highly recommend you check out the Sourdough entry on WikiPedia.

If you are in the local area I'll be happy to provide you some starter.

-Matt the Weekend Baker

Fresh Hot Bread

This is what it looks like when you cut into fresh HOT bread right after it's spent 40+ minutes in a 450 degree oven. If you look very closely (and ignore the background noise) you can just barely see the steam coming out of the cut.

Normally I advocate waiting until AFTER it's stopped steaming... but we were hungry :)



-Matt the Weekend Baker