Sigh…..

My Father-in-Law and fellow sourdough dabbler (he’s much better than I), acquired some new starter this week. It came with a novel about its backstory and a plethora of instructions. It’s over 150 years old, was introduced into San Fransisco by Basque gold miners during the gold rush, and then found its way to Canada by means I forget. Maybe by donkey. Or elephant. But either way, I would watch the Netflix mini-series of its life, and it would be better than that Harlan Coben Michelle Keegan guff.

I started to play with it yesterday afternoon. I needed to discard (chuck some), and feed, (add more flour and water), and once it doubled in volume within a 6-8hour period it was ready to rock. The starter itself is epic, I had to move it from in front of the fire so it didn’t liberate itself from its large Kilner jar prison all over the hearth.

I then learned a new word, poolish, which is like a pre fermented starter that uses just a touch of your starter, with a little flour and water, and you then leave it 12 hours. This my friends, is where things fell apart. I left it in a warm space in front of the fire, popped an extra log on there, and went to bed. Came downstairs in the morning to a freezing house. Yep, we’d run out of pellets in the boiler hopper overnight, so my room temperature was positively Baltic for most of the night and not exactly optimum for a living breathing organism to do it’s best work. This said, it was light and spongy which is what chapter 47 of the book said, so I forged on. Into the kitchen aid went the Poolish, more flour, warm water, and later salt, to make your basic dough. *another absolute balls-up is the tub of flour I knew I had, turned out to be Complet (wholemeal) and not the white all purpose flour you’re supposed to use. Ah well, I continued regardless thinking I had no choice if I wanted this for lunch. It was about 9.30 am at this point.

Insert Morgan Freeman voice here. “But she didn’t have it for lunch, because she didn’t read the instruction manual properly and had missed that after the 3 x 50 minute proving periods, there was ALSO a 2.1/2 hour prove in the proving basket, before baking for 45 minutes”

An irrational hatred of this loaf began to creep into my very soul at this point. I have already made Shakshuka to showcase my obvious baking talents for tea, and nobody wants just tomato and eggs as their main meal of the day. The inclusion of this bread is fairly fundamental.

I gave it the 2.1/2 hour prove in the proving basket and, as instructed, depressed with my finger and the mark remained, which meant it was ready to bake. Oven lit to incendiary levels of hot, boiling water poured into a tray on a lower shelf to aid with crust formation. Set timer for 45 minutes.

It did not have a good rise. I also overbaked it. It was borderline black in colour. I’m telling myself that this is due to the darker flour. I adopt the foetal position….

I tried to depress the crust, it would not move. I sawed off a slice using the bread knife, and considerable effort, and it’s surprisingly tasty if also somewhat hard on the gnashers. I’ve basically made malt loaf with the crustiest crust that ever crusted.

Double sigh….

So tomorrow, we buy the right flour, and we go again. In another 2-3 business days, there may even be an edible loaf!

Thank goodness it’s not the 1850’s as there would be a very angry meeting of the San Franciscan Gold Miners Union…..

TTFN V x