Well, we came through Irma unscathed and now it's time to get back to business as usual! One thing that I love, is bread! Now, my figure will disagree with that statement, but it's my weakness, especially a nice, fresh, crisp loaf of sourdough! At one point last year, I actually had a batch of sourdough culture that I was maintaining and using for my bread. I found that it was too much work, kind of like having a pet, which, I already have plenty of! And when you neglect your culture, it can get really funky. And so, I needed to find a way to make a sourdough type bread that didn't need a starter culture to make it with.
The thing that makes sourdough bread have the "sour" type taste, is the fermentation process with the dough, pulling in natural lactobacilli and yeast from the environment. So, I had to find a way to kind of skip over the long fermentation process and get it shorter and more manageable.
Sourdough is not the type of bread that you can whip up in one day, it has to ferment, or you just have regular bread. The ingredients are flour, yeast, salt and water......that's it!
Mix up the ingredients in your bowl, cover and store in a warm, dry place, and wait.
18 hrs later, a very mild sourdough has been created!
Sprinkle some flour over the dough, so you can loosen it from the bowl, and place in your prepared baking dish.
I use dutch ovens to bake my bread, it turns out very nicely.
Cover and store another 2 hours for the dough to rise up a bit more.
Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees and bake 45-50 min. I need to note, dutch ovens work best if they are pre-heated along with your oven, so to compensate for this, I generally place my dutch oven in the oven during the last 10 minutes of pre-heating for a total of 50 minutes pre-heating/baking. Also, my oven is a big 'ole piece of crap, and takes an eternity to warm up, so, you may not struggle with baking as much as I do ;-P.
And there it is. There is nothing like the smell of fresh baked bread. Now, I cannot promote this bread as a "sandwich" bread, ie: pb&j, or cold-cut style, however, if you desire an awesome BLTA, look no further!
It is also an awesome companion to breakfast! Just toast it up and serve with your over-medium eggs! YUM!
Now, these guys are reserved for a superb bruschetta dish that I make, stay tuned for that coming later.......are you hungry yet?