Hello Blogosphere!!!
I know I've previously had a longer hiatus on here than one week... but since blogging so frequently for the week I was on break and then returning to reality, which means classes suck any life out of me that I may have... I don't know... It just feels that I have not written a new post in ages. And boy do I have so much to tell! I haven't let my studies get in the way of making food and thinking about food... constantly! :)
(Last night my roommate made dinner and I decided to attempt a lighter New York cheesecake recipe courtesy of Cooks Illustrated... hopefully I'll have the time to embellish with another post... but it was less than perfect. I feel a bit disappointed with my friends at Cooks Illustrated. I value their food intelligence and research into their recipe to come up with the perfect product... but this cheesecake fell short of my expectations. Again... I'll get to that at a later date... just know that I have not been slacking in the food department... just the written portion of it. :P)
So this is it. (Michael Jackson reference, anyone?) All my love and devotion... to produce this sorry looking frisbee. (With an ode to the King, himself in the background.) What happened? Why did my lovely yeast buddies fail to produce the beautifully rounded boules that King Arthur promised me would come from all my hard work?
For one thing, I think the loaf was waaay too massive. Can you see that? It's huge. Maybe the pressure of it's size was just too much for those little yeast creatures to keep up with, and it collapsed. Also, my inexperience no doubt led to this conclusion. The process of shaping the boule (the term for the sourdough loaf I made) involved a lot of kneading and tightening to produce a taught, round ball. I'm thinking my ball could most definitely have been tighter. I was too afraid to harm the live cultures inside my bread with too much force. Next time I wont be so nice... next time I'll make sure to exert more power while kneading. Thirdly... I didn't have all the proper tools to bake off the bread. I'm not quite sure it really matters that much, as I did some other research (on epicurious) and there was no mention of it, but I lacked a spray bottle. Sir Arthur, King of Flour tells me that to produce the proper, hearth-like environment for a sourdough loaf, you need three things. A baking/pizza stone, the heat from the stone (that is heating in the oven while the oven gets hot) immediately transfers to the bread which catalyzes an instant reaction within the yeast and causes it to rise significantly in the first few minutes of baking. A cast iron skillet below the stone, when you're putting the bread on the stone, simultaneously... with one of the three extra arms you've now sprouted to accomplish this... you're too fill the also heated skillet with a half cup of water to create a steam-filled environment. The last item I was told to have was said squeeze bottle of water. This is to add a bit more steam in the beginning process of baking. (The first ten minutes is the only time the steam is utilized in the baking process.) However, poor little me got out of class too late and the dollar store was closed, which is where I planned on buying myself a spray bottle. (Actually, I went there a few days ago, to buy the bottle... and, having failed to visit an ATM post Jean Talon... I was completely out of monetary funds... and barely had a dollar to cover my purchase. :P)
Anyways, I'm not sure the spray bottle is completely necessary, but next time I'll be prepared with all the tools. I'll probably halve the recipe too to make a smaller, more manageable loaf.
Oh... the other mishap I ran into was that I neglected to fully read through the recipe and calculate how much time it would take to prepare and then bake the bread. I would like to have done it all in one day, but I didn't start the process until later in the day and had to stash the rising boule in the fridge over night. I think that might have added to my failure a bit. In the fridge, the loaf looked beautifully risen and plump, but then I took it out of the fridge to come to room temperature, released it from its plastic wrap confines, and it began to fall.
Basically, I think a large portion of my problem came from the massive size of said loaf. Next time it will definitely be made smaller. Hopefully that adds to my success.
Look at it, though. The inside did have quite a nice texture and good amount of air pockets. This is the picture I would share with others to make myself out to be a professional... who knows what she's doing. Aside from the obvious lack in height... you can hardly tell it looks like a nicely browned frisbee. :P
Or this one... I'd share this picture to strangers to impress them as well.
I must say... this slight failure has not deterred me from trying again. Au contraire, I am actually more excited to make the second one. The flavor that this first loaf wielded was not very sour at all. Being a young starter, I guess that's to be expected. Now, I've been feeding my little yeast babes for an extra week (every day... who would have thought that maintaing a starter would be so expensive?)... they should have developed a more sour flavor now that they're more mature. I like my sourdough breads more on the sour side. Then again, I'm not sure what kind of intensity I can expect to achieve in the sour department. The King tells me that depending on your location, your starter can adapt different characteristics depending on the bacteria and yeast cultures that are available in your surroundings. Certain states (or countries for that matter) produce different flavored sourdoughs. I'm hoping to increase the sour-ness quite a bit though... but I'll keep you all updated.
Alright... off to do some research. No... not the productive, school-related kind of research. My building is having a bake-off tomorrow and I'm thinking of entering... only if I can find the perfect, wow-them-all recipe. So I must get crakin'.
I hope to have the time to do a couple more posts this weekend... but I do have a bunch of other work I should PROBABLY get out of the way (and by probably... I mean most definitely). So... we'll see.
