Sourdough Disaster and Killing Little Bettie Sue Rice Culture Watson

Well, I tried. I gave it my all. I even used two different recipes: One for a no-knead sourdough (Figured I couldn't mess that one up...right...), and one for a traditional kneaded sourdough. Despite the fact that this is loaf-ish thing is obviously burned (why do I keep burning things? I swear I follow directions well more often than not) the bread was just not great. For the kneaded bread I even pre-heated my eternally frigid hands in hot, hot water and immediately dove in to the dough before they time to cool off (after proofing the sourdough starter and all, as per the instructions). I kneaded and kneaded and kneaded and it sort of seemed like it got to the right doughy consistency...and then I left it to rise.

The no-knead one I touched as little as possible and left to rise.

...Except neither dough rose. I covered them in tea towels and left them undisturbed in the same place I'd had the sourdough cultures growing in the first place, so I figured if the temperature was good for the cultures it'd be good for the bread, but alas, no. I waited, and waited and waited. They just never doubled in bulk. In fact they got a dry crust on top and when I finally took the dough out of the bowls and put them in pans to re-rise ("Re-" being a joke, and punching them down being ineffectual) the underside was soft and happily doughy, but I had to tear off half the hardened top.

This is probably why my bread burned. I effectively ended up baking only half a loaf since I'd thrown out so much hardened crust. So the baking time should have been less. Anyway, I'd ended up leaving the bread to rise for much, much longer than it was supposed to, hoping in vain that they would rise, and if you leave them that long the tangy, lemony flavour of the sourdough becomes very strong. So when the loaves baked up they had a VERY strong sourdough flavour, which I liked at least, but eating a knob was like eating half a loaf, and it just sat in my stomach, despite sourdough's wonderful digestive properties and bacteria. I'm also not sure if there's a point where it's not safe to let the bread sit and kind of ferment anymore...Help?

I tried maybe 3 or 4 more times over the course of the next few days, and my last loaf was almost passable. Dense, but much better than the first few, mostly because I started feeding my gluten-free sourdough culture red fife wheat flour in the hopes that it would help the proofed starter rise better. Nope, didn't work...Lets just say I'm on the verge of murdering my babies, or just letting them starve which I suppose equates to the same thing. Thank goodness I didn't name them. It'd be harder to kill little Bettie Sue Rice Culture Watson.

God I miss my baker, Guillaume. There's something nice about being a mom to sourdough babies, but there's something to be said for expertise. Who am I to think I can do this bread thing better than a seasoned professional? I'll stick to things like angel food cakes with cinnamon figs and ginger confit, logs of sundried tomato cream cheese slow-cooked logs, zabaione al prosecco, pork vindaloo, saag, dosa, caramelized onions, blueberry compote, basil-walnut spread, macademia nut ricotta, daifuku, Szechuan peppercorn-studded chicken meatballs and melamakorona Greek honey cookies...Yeah, that's what I'll do (more pictures to come...).

Grow, Rice Babies! Grow! (Part 2)

I know what it feels like to be a mother. I watch them grow up a little each day. I feed them regularly. One is currently in the fridge and is only being fed once a week (adolescence, says my mother. Step 2.  It has matured past infancy and is making itself useful.) Tomorrow it will be baked.

7 sourdough cultures. How ridiculous is that? My 3 gluten-free flour blend cultures are doing wonderfully! They overflow nightly (a good sign I think), but my all-sweet rice flour cultures are struggling. Fortunately survival of the fittest is not in play. My rice babies can keep on trying, well, until Newfoundland runs out of rice flour, that is. One of these nights they'll froth, I'm sure. One is even starting to froth in the picture above. In fact I'm pretty sure that between the 5 bags of the stuff my mom bought after waiting for the Asian convenience store (yes, there is only one) to get an order in and the three I brought home from Montreal we own the most sweet rice flour of anyone in the province. I dare you to prove otherwise.

So grow, my rice babies! Grow!

Grow, Rice Babies! Grow! (Part 1): Adventures in Gluten-Free Sourdough

I currently have 7 sourdough cultures started in my kitchen. Yes, 7 (you just can't see the 7th in the picture...). The basic recipe for sourdough culture is 1 cup of warm water and 1 cup of flour left for 24 hours uncovered in a warm place in a jar. Every 24 hours you throw out half of the culture and add another half cup of flour and half cup of water. So you end up with the same quantity. It's basically like cutting off the lower half of your body every day and letting it grow back healthier.

But instead of throwing out the first half of the culture I've been keeping them and multiplying my sourdough babies. I hope that's okay. I've been cutting off the legs and letting them grow into a new sourdough culture. 1 becomes 2. But then the next night, 2 became 4 when I did the same thing with both new sourdoughs. Fortunately my jars were big and at my next feeding time I managed to only end up with 7 by combining 1. I never was great at math like my brother. I mean, I wasn't bad, but it's all relative. Again, I hope that the combining is okay and I don't kill anyone.

There's a method to my madness, though. I started the culture with rice flour so that my mom could eat it, and because generally in my family's digestive tracts wheat is the enemy. Picture little rice soldiers on horseback wreaking havoc on my family's intestines. Us Eastern Europeans...So I was going to make it a completely rice flour-based culture, but then I figured since I was going to split it in half I should hedge my bets, so the first time I split the culture in half I added rice flour and water to one jar and a gluten-free flour blend of white rice flour, brown rice flour, sorghum gum, xanthum gum and tapioca starch and water to the other.

 The next day the rice flour seemed just as stagnant but the gluten-free blend actually overflowed!!! It was supposed to take days and days to froth if it ever did at all. It happened so fast I didn't really believe it was ready, so I split it again and fed it again. Now I had four rice flour babies and three gluten-free blend babies. Apparently I'm a bit of a sourdough slut...

Tomorrow, bread!