1:52 p.m.:
Well, the dough has risen once and, as instructed, I have shaped it into two "irregular ovals," or at least what I hope are irregular ovals. Now they are sitting atop parchment paper, hopefully doubling in size again, waiting to be transferred to my pizza stone on the bottom of rack of the oven, which I will turn on to pre-heat in about 10 minutes. Here they were, just before I covered them:
After 27 hours it was finally time to feed my starter....1 cup of regular, all-purpose flour seemed almost anti-climatic after the long day of anticipation and worry. Maybe it was the dry milk, but it just didn't look like it had obtained the yogurt consistency I needed. Before unwrapping the plastic, I couldn't help but worry: was there really yeast fermenting in there? I was only barely decent at creating the magic that was bread using store-bought insta-active-dry yeast; was I over-reaching by trying to create my own....?
The following are some photos of breads I've bakes since last winter. It's fairly obvious I'm just learning and a bit timid (i.e., I could stand to leave the bread in longer for browning, but I'm always gripped by this abject terror that the bread will burn). I'm mostly posting these so I have a kind of pictoral catalougue of my attempts and can see how I'm (hopefully) improving with practice and over tiime.
This was my first loaf of sourdough bread. A bit pale, and not particularly crusty, but it was actually shockingly good and had a definate sourdough taste.
