Days 3-4 of sourdough were painfully uneventful, and then they got eventful, and then they crushed my spirit. The sourdough smelled beery, was frothy and everything looked just perfect for sponging.
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| That's frothy, right? |
Ingredients:
2 cups sponge (leftover goes in the fridge to be used next time)
3 cups unbleached flour (added 1/4 cup at a time, and you may need more than 3 cups)
2 tbsps olive oil or softened margerine
4 tsps sugar
2 tsps salt
So I kneaded it all together and placed it in a warm area- next to the back of my fridge. After I waited around for a few hours, I took a sneak peak under the towel and saw that absolutely nothing had happened. Nothing except the top dried out a little bit. I still had some hope, so I sat it out overnight, and still nothin'.
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| This smells like a frat kitchen. |
For the sake of just producing a loaf of bread, I decided to go the cheater route: packaged yeast (gasp!).
Ingredients:
1 pkg yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
This mixture is supposed to double in size after 10 minutes, and it looked like it could have raised something like that much, so I tossed it in the dough, added 1/2 cup flour just to get it back to the right consistency and put it in my oven on the lowest heat possible. That was 170 degrees, and I opened it several times to make sure I wasn't baking, just proofing. This kind of packaged yeast is supposed to rise in just a few hours, but still, NOTHING!
Oh, brother! So here is my last-ditch effort of cheating. I'm baking this mother fluffer whether it proofs or not! I don't even know if it'll be edible, I just want some freaking bread! So then, I popped out my baking stone, which I've left into the oven for every single bit of baking I've done in the last week, and it is beautiful, and I poured the gloppy unleavened mess on it and stuck it in the oven. Actually, it sort of looked like pizza dough. This is what came out. Technically I failed, but it tasted great. Spread a lot thinner, I actually think this would be a perfect pizza dough.
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| *sniff* |
I have some starter remaining, though, so I still have a chance.
<3,
Megan
