Homemade Sourdough Bread...an attempt :)

Well, I told you I was going to let you follow along with my bread baking adventures (or subject you to them, depending on how you look at it, lol!) so here is my latest attempt. I surfed one of my current favorite recipe sites, Allrecipes, and found this recipe for sourdough starter. It uses 3 ingredients: flour, water, and yeast, which sounded easy enough. I mixed it up last Monday, and "fed" it more water and flour, along with a little pinch of sugar, each day until last Thursday, when I tried making bread with it for the first time. I used this recipe for the bread. Now, since both the starter and the bread recipe call for yeast, I am pretty much cheating here...come to find out "real" sourdough starters use just flour, water, and natural yeasts that fall out of the air or something...but who are we kidding? I am a mom of 5 boys under 10; I need all the help I can get! I don't feel the least bit guilty for cheating on this one!!

Anyway, back to my bread...the first attempt made a decent loaf of bread, but not very sourdough-y. Which is fine, since I'd read that it takes a while for your starter to really develop good flavor. I tried my second batch yesterday. It smelled wonderful while it was baking and the flavor was equally good--nice and sourdough-y tasting. I even think it looks pretty! I got a nice crispy/slightly chewy crust by putting a pan of water in the oven and spraying water in there a few times early on to make steam, but the bread itself (inside the crust) was very tender, not at all chewy with great big holes in it like the stuff I've bought at the bakery. Overall, though, not bad! Everyone has enjoyed eating it!!

Here are my 2 loaves from yesterday right when they came out of the oven...


Here's a close-up of one of the loaves...


I have to share a story with you that I thought was funny. When Jeremy first saw my starter (it lived loosely covered on my counter for the first 4 days of its life) he said "So THAT'S how you make sourdough bread? Okay, now you've RUINED it for me forever!" He thought the starter was about the grossest thing he'd seen/heard of in a while! I have to say, though, that he's been enjoying the bread just as much as everybody else! :)