So, if you haven't guessed by now, the sourdough bread was a major fail.
Major. Fail.
I'm not surprised. Something seemed off about that starter. I should have asked a bread-making friend for a sourdough recipe. In fact, I'm going to do so right now: if you have any success making sourdough bread, please pass on to me your recipe for a starter, and maybe I'll try again. Because the one I used totally sucked.
The final steps added a ton more flour, and even more water. What started off as a compact, dough-like starter turned into a loose, soupy mess that looked a lot like every other starter I've ever seen. There was no kneading that.
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| The consistency of extra soggy oatmeal. |
Out of sheer curiosity I tried taking the remaining half of my starter, adding a handful of slurry, letting it rest for an hour and then tossing it in the oven. I also tried adding a lot more flour to the remaining slurry and kneading the hell out of it for twenty minutes until it resembled bread dough, letting it rest over night, and baking that. The latter came out looking like sourdough on the outside.
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| Dense as a doorknob. |
So that pretty much seals the deal: I would never make it as a pioneer woman. Well, I shouldn't say that--presumably if I lived back then, I would have been raised on home made bread, baking a daily loaf would have been a fact of life. And under the constant tutelage of my talented Mother, I'm sure I would have learned the knack quite thoroughly, just as I've picked up the knack for so many of our family recipes.
As it is, however, don't time machine me back to those days--I would have no bread, and I would probably wind up passing through the digestive system of wolves.
To compensate for my miserable bread failure, I'm probably going to make pie later this week. Because I can.