It's a Miracle - Finally (Day 2)!

I have been faithfully feeding this starter twice a day. Our instructions said the starter should be bubbly by day six or seven but nothing has been going on. I split my original starter ten days ago into a second jar and started feeding it pineapple juice instead of water in the hopes of jump starting this now semi-white mass. The second one had more bubbles but still no doubling.

Apparently Santa Claus stopped by and added some "stuff" to my starters since all of a sudden the pineapple fed jar doubled in size on the 26th and the original starter also started to grow significantly in size (the top of the blue tape was the starting point for both starters after feeding). Now both are very active and tomorrow I may have my first attempt at a creating some bread using my own levain.

It's Alive - part deux

The Winter Quarter has started at MCC and I'm enrolled in Artisan Breads. We made baguettes in our first class yesterday and also created a sourdough starter. (This starter will be needed in a couple of weeks as our course work moves to using levains.) The starter has been sitting in the kitchen since I brought it home. Today the culture has some small bubbles on top, showing signs of life.

Last year I created a sourdough starter from grapes but it had a much higher volume and feeding it daily required a large amount of flour. This current starter is much more "reasonable" in terms of its volume and feeding requirements. Hopefully this effort will work out. I start twice daily feedings tomorrow.

A new stone

My text for Artisan Breads has pictures of breads baked under different circumstances. Some were baked on a hearth and some on a sheet pan - the differences I found remarkable. So I recently purchased a FibraMent-D baking stone and I finished the recommended pre-drying process a couple of days ago.

The picture is my first attempt at baking ciabatta with poolish on a stone. All previous attempts resulted in a smooth texture without the characteristic ciabatta large air holes. I'm still trying to get the oven temperature corrected since the bread has been taking on too much color.

Baking English Muffins

I recently watched an old Julia Child show on English muffins that was both informative and hilarious. She used cat food cans for rings to shape the muffins as she cooked them on a range top griddle. Julia managed to burn almost all of the muffins she made plus she completely mangled the one muffin she used to demo the proper way to split these platforms for Eggs Benedict.

Since I had a recipe for English muffin bread, I thought I would experiment by baking these little gems instead of the traditional way of cooking them on a griddle. Also, rather than use cat food cans, I used some 3-inch stainless steel rings molds. My muffins turned out looking like they were on steroids. In retrospect, the amount of dough I used was probably about double the amount I should have used. The muffins were pretty tasty with a nice texture to them.