Blog posts

Inaugural Trial For General Chaos Starter

Toast

COMMENTARY: Well I bit the bullet on Day 10 and decided that doubling or no, I would use the leftover starter from General Chaos' morning feeding or die trying! I also had been having a serious case of Sourdough Envy due mainly from Tattoed Tonkas conquest of the Apple Bacon Onion Sourdough Bread and also Katie's very successful sourdough accomplishments.

Sourdough english muffins

Profile picture for user Kjknits

I used some of my starter that would have been discarded last night during refreshment to make some english muffins.  I found this recipe about 3 years ago on the KAF Baking Circle.  It was submitted by a user going by the name chard.  It makes great english muffins!

engmuff2

 

Thank you, TT

Toast
Thank you for the kind offer, TT, but it was logging on that was giving me grief - pictures will be waaaay down the road. I seem to have beaten the computer into submission and didn't get any rude messages this evening. I only hope this doesn't show up twice because I went to preview and lost what I had written. I want to thank Weavershouse for the pizza recipe and great pictures. In a weak moment I invited my grandaughters to sleep over tomorrow night, and I decided we can make individual pizzas for supper. Margaret and Lily will enjoy making a mess and hopefully we will eat well.

TADA!!

Toast
Well, maybe it didn't turn out so bad after all. Although the crust is very hard and it didn't rise as much as I had hoped. It sure is a nice color and it actually smells like real bread.first loaffirst loaffirst loaf - top view

BBA Potato Rosemary Bread

Profile picture for user Kjknits

Last night we had some mashed potatoes.  I had just read the BBA pugliese formula recently, and thought that I would make it with some of the leftovers.  Well, as it happens, I found the Potato Rosemary bread on my way to the pugliese, and it also contains mashed potatoes!  Then I saw that the general formula for the biga makes enough for both the pugliese and the potato rosemary breads.  And then I discovered that my leftover potatoes weighed EXACTLY as much as the amounts called for in the two recipes.  A sign from the universe, perhaps?  So I made t

Starting a starter, fmi

Profile picture for user Kjknits

I want to post here how I started my sourdough starter, and what happened throughout the process, so I can come back and review if necessary later.

All amounts are weight measurements measured on my Salter scale. All water is Brita-filtered water at room temperature.  Starter is rotated between two Mason jars with each feeding so jar is always kept fairly clean and sludge-free.  Ring cap is placed loosely on jar after feeding.

 

Rise, I say!!

Toast
I never thought I'd see the day when I would get excited about a lump of dough. I just finished kneading a basic recipe and now I have to wait a very long 90 minutes for it to rise before kneading it again. It's very warm and humid here today so I wonder if that will affect the rising time. Any thoughts? My wife is going to be very surprised when she gets home because I've been talking about doing this for months. Her first clue will be the fact that it will be very warm in the kitchen even though the air conditioning is going full blast. No, wait a minute.

absolute noobie

Toast
I have never baked a loaf of bread in my life. I am 53 years old. My mom still makes delicious Irish soda bread. But it is my brother who lives in Costa Rica that has inspired me to finally bake some bread. I am the type of person who would never be satisfied just baking a loaf of plain white bread every weekend. I tend to max out everything I do (I started running a few years ago to get in shape and lost 42 pounds inside of 6 months). Then I started drinking beer and stopped running only to find that the 42 pounds came back with a vengeance. DUH!

Vacation's over

Profile picture for user pmccool

After being on vacation 10 days, it’s taken me almost 2 days of intermittent poking around to catch up on the various goings on at TFL.  This is one busy bunch of bakers!  I especially enjoyed the JMonkey/TattooedTonka sourdough starter event and the reminiscing by others about how they got started with making bread.

Katie's Bread Blog

Profile picture for user Kjknits
Just thought I would start a blog, so I can stop highjacking bluezebra's with all of my sourdough questions.  Hopefully I will soon be posting some photos of my own sourdough loaves!