Wapcaplet's blog

I had a great success in sourdough this week, with the most impossibly light and even crumb.

My previous sourdough, and many photos I've seen of quality sourdough, have a preponderance of large irregular bubbles. This is totally unlike that.

This is perhaps my 5th attempt at making bread with sourdough starter, without any commercial yeast. Three of my previous attempts used a Sourdough pain naturel recipe with various mixes of whole wheat, white bread flour, and unbleached all-purpose flour, and one was an improvised recipe using white flours. I used an overnight levain with only a small amount of starter (~15g) for all of these.

This is a recipe of my own, adapted from a similar recipe I use for pancakes, which was based on a simple sourdough crumpet recipe (starter, salt, sugar, soda), which itself made half decent pancakes, or "pan-fakes" as my wife named them. The added eggs and oil make them more like real waffles (or pancakes), but are more airy and crispy than similar ones made from milk and straight flour.

Some weeks back I checked out Ken Forkish's "Flour Water Salt Yeast" ebook from the local library, and began lurking on these forums. I have learned a great deal about bread from all of your expertise here.

I read the first part of the book and thought of trying his sourdough starter recipe, at vastly smaller portions. I think he suggests 500g each per feeding, which is crazy for a beginner--why on earth would you need so much when billions of these organisms can live in a teaspoon?