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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

A (Sourdough) Bread Making Day

My husband is a cook and one of his favorite things to do is go the the website all recipes.com. I must admit not my favorite site, until now! My son purchased a loaf of Sourdough bread for us one day while doing a little shopping for me, that we just loved. So, we decided we should try and make our own. We found this recipe for  Sourdough starter



After sitting on our counter for eight days this is what it looked like after stirring, sorry I didn't take a picture before, it was separated with a light brownish liquid on top, not the prettiest, but with a little stirring it looked like this. The recipe tells you what to make and store your starter in and also what to stir it with.  It was very simple and took no time at all to make.


Now you are ready to make bread! The recipe we used is also from all recipes.com. It is the called San Francisco Sourdough Bread.




Very simple, just a matter of adding the starter and the dry ingredients and following  the recipe. It yielded two beautiful loaves. These loaves have a little olive oil rubbed on the top to make them nice and pretty.

When you have taken out enough starter for your batch of bread you are making just add more of the ingredients in the recipe and start all over again. This is what is sitting on our counter this morning....


You can see the liquid I was talking about. It says to keep it covered and with a pan or something underneath, just in case it runs over. We used a large canning jar that was large enough so it did not run over, that would not have been very fun cleaning up. After a few days we will be able to keep it in the refrigerator instead of out on the counter. In just a day or two our starter will be ready to bake more bread if we want. We bought whole wheat flour to substitute for some of the white flour and we are also planning on rolling our loaves in whole oats next time for a variation. The bread my son bought from the grocery store had wheat in it and was coated in oats and we really like the additional flavor. It will be fun to experiment with different ingredients.

If you decide to make this recipe I would love to hear about it. Also, if you change ingredients and come up with your own flavors that would be fun to hear also.

I don't know what is happening to me, but yesterday I spent the day making homemade soup. That was an all day experience. I did not even get to any sewing. I was downstairs watching the pot of homemade stock simmering away. I think that may be a tiny drawback of having my sewing room upstairs. Hmm.... maybe I just haven't gotten back into sewing after our little vacation. I will be telling you about that soon. I also have some pictures from there too.

After baking bread on Sunday and soup cooking all day yesterday we had homemade soup and homemade Sourdough bread for dinner. It was very yummy!! I guess I am giving in to the fact that Fall is coming, I really love Summer but I am ready to move forward now.

What have you been doing lately? Getting your children back to school, shopping for school clothes and supplies? I remember those days, even though we home schooled we went school clothes shopping, bought lots of school supplies, notebooks, back packs and plenty of fun things for lunches.  Maybe taking an end of the Summer vacation? We saw a lot of travelers when we ventured out to Leesburg  and visited a wonderful vintage shop called "Old Lucketts Store", how lucky are we, it is just about an hour and a half away from us. So much fun!! Or are you busy sewing??? Let me know I would love to hear about it!

Now that I have said it, I think it is time for me to get busy with all the sewing I have been putting off! I have quite a list and it keeps growing daily!! Enjoy your day!


18 comments:

  1. I made sour dough bread last week, but mine did not have any yeast in it. This week, I am going to make sour dough pizza crust, wait until you try sour dough pancakes! Yum!

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  2. Your pictures just made my breakfast totally insufficient. I bet it is yummy.

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  3. Thanks for sharing the link for the recipe! :)

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  4. I tried making sourdough bread several months ago... unfortunately I chose to do it right after I got pregnant. The smell, which probably wouldn't have normally bothered me, was so off-putting that I had to throw the whole thing out after only making one loaf. LOL

    I'm going to have to try it again now that I have a new recipe!

    We just sent my daughter off to Kindergarten last week. It's been a tough road these past few days, and I'm pretty emotionally wrung out. I'm hoping she'll do better as the next few days pass. We'll see!

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  5. Oh yummy...I love fresh bread! Looks great.

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  6. My weakness is bread and this just put in hungry mood! Thanks for sharing...Judith, Texas

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  7. That bread looks awesome! My grandmother used to make the BEST bread. I think I will have to give this a try. :) My daughter went back to school three weeks ago so we are finally back to a more normal routine.

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  8. I love sour dough bread and had a starter but I got tired of making that kind of bread. I made some olive and sun dried tomato bread this past weekend. It tastes almost like pizza.
    Soup and bread a great combination. I can't wait for cooler weather here so I can do the same thing.
    I am just been sewing and gardening.

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  9. San Fransisco Sour Dough Bread is my absolute favorite! :o)
    I am heading over to the recipe now. :o) I can't wait to make some!

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  10. your sourdough bread looks great! back in the day, sourdough bread used to be the bread to make [my dad was the breadmaker!] along with sourdough hotcakes, most of the time with chopped apple, and waffles [with bacon slices] though additives could very: wholewheat subbed for half the flour, instant oatmeal, cinnamon and raisins, the list was endless! the start was worked in a big crock jar, never refrigerated, always in use!
    my contribution: add grated cheddar cheese!

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  11. I have a starter that I keep in my fridge because I only get a chance to use it about once every week or two. I have been using/feeding the same starter for over a year now. I have used it in pancakes, waffles, breads, pizza dough and even muffins. My favorite is to add roasted garlic and basil and sometimes cheese to bread or pizza dough. You can change a lot of recipes and use it as long as you take out some of the liquid and some of the flour from the recipe. Enjoy!

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  12. San Francisco sour dough bread is one of a kind. I remember sitting in SFO
    wharf restaurant tasting it for the first time. I wanted to order a whole loaf when the waiter came. There is nothing like it Oz.
    Haven't been back since - so still long (after 35 yrs)for the bread. Friends can bring back Ghiradelhi(?) chocs but not the bread.

    So thank you-thankyou-thankyou-for the starter...and to your hubby for finding it.

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  13. Hi Jennie & Clara. I just happened upon your blog and it looks like one I want to follow. You like all the same things I do! My son is a SLC,Utah firefighter/paramedic and he got me some starter that one of the fireman has had going a long time. It makes wonderful pancakes and when my grandson is here, chocolate chips go in to the batter. I also have a great recipe for chocolate cupcakes using the starter. They are so moist and chocolatey. I will share the recipe if you like. I lived in San Francisco for many years and had Starter going all the time. I used to make a lot more bread with having the whole family together. So happy baking, sewing and embroidering and I will check back soon. Ann xoxo

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  14. Going to make a sourdough starter today as I've been going to try making sourdough bread but was a bit put off by the starter recipes I found. The link to the starter here looks easy. Thanks so much :).
    Cheers,
    Robyn

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  15. Ooh, I'm so jealous! Our first starter ended up all over the floor thanks to a rather pesky cat! We have started again and put it out of harms way and hope to be baking bread in a week or so! Your loaves look amazing.

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  16. OH that just makes me almost drool. I absolutely LOVE Sourdough bread. I don't even need anything but the bread. Give me a chunk of Sourdough and I'm happy.

    The sad thing is that I have made just about anything you can think of in all my years of cooking/baking and tons of bread recipes BUT, the one thing I haven't done is make my own Sourdough. I've never been able to get past that step in making it of doing the starter. I just have a huge problem/phobia about making something and letting it sit on my counter or anywhere else for that long before using it to make bread. And then too, is that part in the recipe for the starter where it gives the warning about if it is pink to toss it out. I did find an awesome powdered sourdough bread starter a number of years ago that worked really well without the need to begin with the starter and that was good but just not the same. Maybe I should just get over it and try.

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  17. What a wonderful blog! I am about to start my very first attempt at sourdough bread, my mother has done it for years. Looking forward to browse through your blog. Happy day! towe.

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Jennie & Clara