Sourdough and me

Recently I have been doing a major declutter of my house, and been making some tough decisions of what stays and goes. As part of this I got rid of my bread machine and decided I was going to make everything by hand (as soon as I decided this mass panic occurred but I decided to stick by my decision). Conveniently the same day I popped down to 'The Urban Larder' (a lovely local shop) and blow me there was a sourdough making course happening the next week, so I signed up.

So yesterday after work the event occurred I made my first sourdough! This course was run by Peter Voshol from Loaf for Life, who was friendly, nice and extremely insightful.

The class started off with a lovely cup of tea and tasting of breads that Peter had made so that we could understand what different flours produced in density and taste, so we were off to a very good start. Peter had a special bread he was working on for the Cambridge apple festival at the botanics gardens, which personally I could of eaten the whole loaf in one go, it a delicately flavored apple, cranberry and cinnamon bread (i'm salivating just thinking about it). After this we then spoke about the principles of sourdough and the tools needed (I liked how Peter took a cost effective approach to this). Then we got to start our sourdough and it was mucky, but I loved feel the dough and seeing how it works when different ingredients are added.

Here are the ingredients pre mixing

Here is the ingredients proving wearing a lovely shower cap

Whilst the ingredients were proving we tasted lots of starters to understand the qualities they have- I found this really interested as there was significant difference between them, we then learnt how to look after our starter and had a Q&A session. Then the bread went into the oven (the moment of truth was getting ever so close), we had some lovely cake to keep us going and then the big unveil. 

My Bread is on the back row far right

My bread worked I couldn't believe it, and I can tell you this morning it tasted wonderful. Tonight I will be feeding my starter ready for my second loaf this weekend.