Bread Recipe go here.
Brownie recipe go here.
In the bread recipe I substituted honey for the sugar and put in 1/4 less water as the conversion chart recommended.
In the brownie recipe I used coco powder and used the suggested substitution for bars to powder.
I am a lot happier with my attempts at bread baking this time. I followed the directions, let it rise over night, set the timer to knead and it came out a lot better. The dough was easier to manage and I did not need to add any flour to the mixture. My brownies came out great too and tasted good however they are more cake like and some people don't care for that, I love it. I made a double batch of sourdough bread so I used several different options for baking. To bake one I used the new silicone baking pan (by far the was the best, baked the best and the crust was perfect), I also used a baking stone for a round loaf and a cookie sheet for two oblong loaves which turned out OK as well. The baking stone gets too hot I think. I am learning little tricks as I go. Hopefully the pictures show some justice to my baking efforts this weekend. The first picture shows the two loaves on the cookie sheet I just shaped as oblongs and the other is the one that came out of the silicone bake ware.
Here are some pictures of the finished products. The sourdough chocolate cake was good. I only had a few bites so far and I took some to my mom. It is a little bit dry. Next time I make this I am going to substitute buttermilk for the water I think that would make it taste better and a lot of other recipes are using milk instead of water. Even though it is still good and I like the taste and ease of making it.
My bread did rise. Then I sparely sprinkled flour on the counter and started the kneading process. I read the comments on the recipe and some where trying to knead in more flour, you don't need to do this just keep the counter lightly sprinkled so the dough won't stick and rub some flour between your hands to keep them from sticking. My dough was very easy to work with and was not overly sticky so I think I did it right at this point. I knead by overlapping the dough towards me and pushing it away from me with my lower palm of my hand. Then fold one side in and knead, fold the other side and knead. Sometimes I used my fist but over all it worked out OK. I didn't want to make bread loaves in bread pans so I used a knife to cut the bread in the middle, rounded it gently and put it on a lightly floured baking sheet to rise again.
And the verdict is the bread was too dense. It tasted OK but was just too dense. Several things happened that I think I did wrong. One is I rushed the rising, two is I did not knead long enough and probably didn't let it rise enough again. I did a bit of research and it said that dense bread is caused by too much flour and not enough kneading to put the air into the dough. I will give it another try this week sometime and see how it works out. We had lasagna with our dense bread and the chocolate cake. Yummy.
I knew you could make bread or rolls but what I didn't know was that you can make an endless amount of other things with sourdough starter. Here is a site I found that has so many good recipes I don't know where to start.
Read more...
I decided to go ahead and use all purpose white flour. Considering I am new to this and the white flour seems to rise better for me I am going to experiment with it and then move on to other things. My starter has a mixture of whole wheat and white flour. Last night I fed it a cup of white flour and a cup of water. I keep hearing warm water but I have read a lot about using water that is too warm which I think I have done. This kills the wild yeast so better to use tepid water. Here is the recipe that I used for the sourdough bread. The only change I made was using honey instead of sugar and it says to do it overnight but considering I got up at 6am I decided it would have plenty of time to rise before dinner and it has already risen some. (picture of the rising product above.) This bread recipe was a lot easier then the one I tried before. I was able to mix in the first three cups of flour and then slowly knead in the other cups of flour. I didn't use exactly 6 cups.
I have plenty of starter left and I wanted to try something else so I decided on a sourdough chocolate cake. This is not a low carb/low sugar cake but my husband loves chocolate cake and I wanted to bake so... here is the recipe for that recipe. It was super easy and the only change I made was to use real butter instead of shortening. The batter was a little thicker almost like brownie batter. The smell of it baking was incredible and the finished product looks great, it had no problems rising and used the exact amount of time it recommended. My biggest problem now is do I use a chocolate fudge frosting I have or a cream cheese one? I have lots of frosting from my Kroger mega sale trips so I am not making frosting. The picture of the baked cake is above. I could eat it right now!
Yes I am up in the middle of the night again. I have a problem with dreaming...I dream all the time and I dream very deep, vivid dreams and most of them are not nice dreams. I have always dreamed this way and sometimes I end up waking up scared, or crying and need to get up and settle down before going back to bed. Most of you will remember I fight with depression and in therapy we have talked a lot about my dreams. I dream about water over taking me a lot, I also dream of tornadoes getting me in some shape of form. Snakes are often in my dreams and my dream that always gets me really upset is my husband leaving me. Can anyone say I have an abandonment issue? lol Anyway I am up at an ungodly hour and worried about my sourdough.
I am hoping to make bread in the morning but I worry it won't rise. So I started searching online to find a really good sourdough site. I found sourdoughhome. This site gave me a bit of peace. If my starter won't rise, then I will just make another and another until I get it right. Check it out there is a lot of recipes there...sourdough carrot, pineapple cake....yummy.
Here is a picture of my sour dough starter. I moved it to a bigger container today and this is what it looks like a few hours later. It is definetly ready for baking if I wanted. I plan on waiting until this weekend when I have more time so I am going to leave it on the counter to grow some more. Anyone else start the sour dough? How is yours doing? Next time I post on this I will have pictures of the finished product no matter how good or bad it turns out!
My sourdough starter is doing very well. This morning I woke up to it puffed up with some bubbles on it, I was so excited. It doesn't take much to get me going. Make sure you have fed your starter. See posts below or on left side bar if you would like to start your own bread starter.
If you have not seen any bubbles you should see it coming in another few days, so be patient. If yours has a frothy looking bubbles then you are ready. You can make your bread or put it in the fridge for safe keeping. Feed it and put it in the fridge. It was recommended to let the jar have a little air so don't put lid on tight just loosely set it on there. Feed your starter once a week. If it gets "hooch" don't worry about it. That is the dark color that can settle on top of the starter. If your starter is dry mix it back in, if your starter has plenty of liquid then just poor off the watery mix, it won't hurt anything.
I won't make my bread until the weekend. I am not putting it in the fridge yet so don't worry if you cant get to it until then. This is a basic recipe.
Step One: You need to make a sponge out of your starter. To make the sponge take your starter out of fridge and put in a large glass or plastic bowl, add 1 cup warm water and one cup flour and stir into your starter. Leave it in a warm place or overnight and let it proof or ferment. The longer the proofing goes the more sourdough taste you will get. When it is bubbly and frothy it is ready.
Step two: The recipe
2 cups sponge (proofed starter)
3 cups flour
2 T Olive oil or softened butter
4 t. sugar ( I have no idea if you can use a substitute, I will have to check on this)
2 t. salt
Take your left over sponge (proofed starter, feed it and stick it in fridge for next time. Make sure you jar/container is clean and even boiled water put over it to kill bacteria)
To the sponge add the oil/butter (they say this is optional but I am going to use it first to see if I need it. Add the sugar and salt. Mix well and then start adding a 1/2 cup of flour at a time. At this point you need to knead that flour in, you can use a dough mixer, a bread machine or like me your little ole bare hands. You want a nice flexible dough. Remember that flour varies so you may need a little less or a little more depending on your dough, use your eyes.
Put in a lightly covered bowl and let rise. Sourdough takes longer to rise and this could take an hour or much longer. It is done when you can poke a finger in it and it doesn't pop back. Punch the dough down...yeah that is right picture MY HUSBAND's face and punch it right down in the middle, and knead a bit more. After kneading a bit more make a loaf and put it on a lightly greased or cornmeal cookie sheet (or loaf pan) to rise again. You can slit the top and lightly cover to rise to double again.
Put this in the oven and set on 350 DO NOT PREHEAT oven. Bake for 35-40 minutes when done you should be able to thump the bottom and hear a hollow sound. Cool before slicing.
Tomorrow I will show you a picture of my starter. Go here to see another recipe and she says you can use honey instead of sugar...so that is what I am going to use. She has pictures of making the dough as well.
I am a baker by nature and I love freshly baked breads, cookies and more. I want to make things that are as natural as I can and I have been reading a lot lately about different ways of soaking your flour, grains and beans. As I was reading about these methods I stumbled upon making sourdough bread and became intrigued.
It is easy, I mean really easy and has no artificial yeast in it (it makes it own yeast so it is better for you). Once it is fermented, it takes about a week to accomplish this you can make your first loaf and continue to use your starter forever, it is hard to kill it off. This way you have a good heartily baked bread that is good for you. I will post more on this later but for now this is what I did and will do this week to 'grow' the starter.
The reason it is called sourdough is because the longer you ferment the more strong the sour taste. I will explain more later but if you dont like sour bread it doesn't have to have that strong sour taste.
Sourdough Bread Starter
Step one:
Take one cup of flour and one cup of warm water. Put into a wide top opening glass or plastic container with a lid do not use metal container. Stir the flour and water together, put on lid, and then keep it on the counter or somewhere warm (70 degree).
You can choose the flour you want, white, wheat, spelt is all mentioned as good uses. I used white tonight because I didn't have wheat but I will get some wheat tomorrow and start another.
Step Two:
Every 24 hours "feed" the starter. Take half the starter and throw it away. Take a half cup flour and a half cup warm water and stir that into the starter. Remember keep it in a warm place in the kitchen. Do this every day for 3 to 4 days. In that time you will start to see bubbles forming and you will get a yeasty, beery smell and it may start to puff up too. When it develops a bubble froth it is done. Simple huh?
OK so get started on the STARTER, play on words..like that? lol. And tomorrow I will tell you what we are going to do with the wonderful, yeast, beer smelling mix.
