Hi all, I am brand new to the joys of bread baking. I have been growing a starter for the past 7 days made with rye flour and water.
Yesterday I attempted my first loaf which didn't finish up too well. It looked the part, but inside was thick and stodgy with a very doughy look and bite to it.
I used spelt flour with water and my starter or the mix.
I was wondering - when adding a starter to water and flour, can I use any type of flour I like or are there some flours that are better and/or easier than others to bake with? I try not to eat much white bread in spite of it being delicious, so wondering what y'all would recommend and also if there are any limitations on what type of flour one can use. TQ.
Spelt used as 100% of your flour is doable, but not something to attempt in the beginning stages of learning. That bread would be very challenging for many experienced bakers. Spelt makes a weak dough, especially when used at high percentages.
If your starter is active and ready to bake, we have a recipe made to order just for you. It is simple, straightforward, and the instructions are clear.
See this link and let me know what you think. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56678/123-sourdough-no-knead-do-nothing-bread
I strongly recommend that you use either All Purpose or Bread flour for your initial bakes. Once to gain success you will be better prepared to venture out with other grains and flours.
HTH
Dan
Well, you've picked a tough one to start with, for sure! Even whole wheat (hard red spring wheat) would be easier than spelt. As Danny says, it's very weak flour and difficult to work with.
I also suspect your starter isn't nearly strong enough yet to adequately ferment and proof a loaf of anything, let alone whole spelt. So here are a couple of things to try:
Here's my amateur take on the matter of flours:
1. Different flours, even different flours of the same "type" (e.g. white, rye, whole wheat, etc.) make breads that behave differently and that taste differently. Cheap, generic AP flour does not make as nice a bread as a bag of King Arthur flour, let alone one of the beauties from Stan at NYbakers.com.
2. The easiest way to make a nice loaf of bread for a newbie is to start with a good grocery store bread flour like King Arthur, Gold Medal, etc.
3. The more you stray from white bread flour the trickier it gets. As you head from all white bread flour to 100% rye flour, given the same recipe, you wander from nice and light to door stop (brick). Not saying that a door stop is necessarily unpleasant. There are lots of delicious things to put on a thin, tasty, gummy, heavy slice of a 100% rye doorstop. It's a much better platform for cream cheese and smoked sausage than a fluffy sandwich bread.
4. Learn what different flours tend to do to bread dough and you'll open the door to lots of fun. For example, rye flour has no gluten therefore 100% rye dough will never become very stretchy and will never rise very much. Any fluffy rye bread is predominantly white flour. Whole wheat flour is "thirstier than AP or bread flour and the coarser the grind the more it seems to cut the gluten threads and prevent high rises.
5. Someone else's perfect crust may seem burned or tough or too thick or whatever to you. That's the nice thing about homemade bread -- you get to make what you want.
6. Finally, you can always blame it on the weather. Bread made on a cold, dry day is small and dense relative to the same loaf made on a hot humid day which will be light and fluffy.
7. Even the most experienced baker makes good loaves and bad. Even the worst of them is usually better than most grocery store bread (unless you forget the salt ;-))