Back at my Alma Mater, I made
two sourdough starters. While I was away, my mom accidentally broke the glass jar containing the whole wheat one of the two. Although she managed to keep about 1/4 cup's worth, she made a new starter entirely created at home. Since the starter began bubbling away happily about 2 weeks ago, we decided to make some
Pain au Levain (sourdough bread) today, which comes to about half-whole-wheat bread in the way that we have constructed it. It is on it's first period of fermentation now and i hope it comes out well.
The
Pain au Levain recipe comes from Bread Cetera, except that I halved the recipe, added extra water (the desert) and exchanged the rye flour for whole wheat. My levain is also whole-wheat in nature.
Update: The bread was a complete disaster. I cannot describe how horrible. Any number of things could have been wrong. It's hardly worth considering, because it was so awful. I'll try again some other time.
I hate it when something I've spent time on fails completely! That's been happening to me a lot since I'm in an unfamiliar kitchen. You were brave to post the photo...kind of looks like an old leatherback tortoise ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks. It's especially hard with bread because unless there is a particularly bead indication during the preparation process, you have no idea until it comes out of the oven.
ReplyDeleteI read something recently that says that I should have added 1.5-2 hours to the (already 4.5 hour) proofing time in this climate. Who knew?