Bread Baking with Sourdough!

     Ever since October, I have been the proud mother to a sourdough starter! It isn’t very cute, but it is very alive and bubbly. It takes proper care to thrive and develop its complex nature. Daily maintenance requires either using a bit of the starter to make bread or dumping some of it down the drain (that always makes me a little sad), or you could give some to a friend. You need to feed it equal parts of flour and water. I give mine a bit of rye flour and the rest, white. I do this once a day in the morning and by evening it is frothy and ready to be made into bread dough.
     It is a lengthy process in some ways, to make sourdough, but it is so worth it! It takes 18 hours after you have mixed the ingredients in the evening as I mentioned before, until you are ready for the next step. It has all become very routine for me however and it works out really well with my situation of living and working from home. So I thought I’d explain how it all comes together.
     For the multigrain seeded sourdough I have been making, I use 2 ½ cups white flour, ½ c. whole wheat flour, and ¼ c. rye flour. I try to use all organic ingredients when possible. I also add in whole grains such as quinoa and millet, two staples in a vegetarian’s diet, which are good to help create complete proteins. Then there are the seeds. I use ¼ c. pumpkin seeds, ¼ c. sunflower seeds, 2 Tbl. Sesame seeds, and 2 tsp. poppy seeds. A little salt and some starter, water and a couple Tbl. of yogurt, make the dough complete. I mix it until it is combined completely then cover the mixing bowl with a shower cap (it works perfectly!) Set it in a warmish place and let it be until 18 hours later. If I mix it at 9 pm I start step 2 at 3pm the next day.
     At that time I move the dough from the mixing bowl to a proofing basket, which is made of rattan and sprayed with oil and dusted with sesame and poppy seeds. Sadly the raccoons stole this basket the other night. I gently scrape it into this basket then cover it again with the shower cap for another hour and a half. I have a ceramic device called a La Cloche that is used to bake the bread inside. After one hour I start heating the oven to the max of 500 degrees. When heated I put the dough into a small metal pan to give it shape and into the La Cloche it goes. Baking takes a half hour, then I take the top cover off and cook at 475 degrees for another 15 minutes or so.
     The hardest part is waiting for it to cool before slicing into it. I need to read up on why this is important but the guy who taught me, sourdough Bob, said so, so I guess I will believe him. When you do slice into it though, it is heaven! Sometimes I put some of our homemade apple butter on it. Sometimes it’s sunflower butter, just butter, or nothing on it at all is good too! Pure yummy bread!