Home-Ground Flour and Sourdough

A more prudent person would have separated these into two separate adventures, but home-ground flour and active doubling-itself sourdough arrived in my kitchen on the same day, so what's an excited baker to do? Bake no-yeast bread with home-ground flour, of course.

Home-Ground Flour

Alanna Kellogg, of A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade, offered me a "real flour experience." That turned out to mean a large tin of wheat and a grinder. We made the exchange over a lovely lunch in downtown Kirkwood yesterday afternoon and I came home with a new toy for the kitchen.

Grinding a cup or so of flour turned out to be easy and quick. The flour texture is varied which makes beautiful flecks in the dough.

Sourdough Starter

For a couple of days, I'd been maintaining some of my starter (also originally from Alanna) using the directions at the Sourdough Home website. By yesterday afternoon, I had gobs of the stuff growing and bubbling in a bowl on the counter. The Sourdough Home site is all about making bread without yeast--all the rise comes from the sourdough starter. That's been my goal since this spring when I started thinking about how one would make an entirely local loaf of bread -- it would have to be sourdough to avoid the use of commercial yeast. The ultimate bread for that purpose would be A 100% Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread, but I used some discretion and didn't go for that as my first no-yeast and first home-ground flour loaf.

Black Canyon Sourdough Bread

Instead, I started with a loaf that would use a high percentage of non-local bread flour and only a little of the home-ground whole wheat flour: Black Canyon Sourdough Bread. I made just half a recipe because of my other challenge. Besides all the new tools and techniques, "fix the oven" has not yet made it to the top of the priority list. So, I needed to do the final rise and bake in the bread machine, which will only bake one loaf at a time. The photo is of the dough going in for its final rise.

It turned out surprisingly well. The bread has a nice texture and that distinguishing sourdough flavor. The only problem was from the bread machine. The loaf was small so only the side and bottom crusts were browned. The top of the loaf is pale. Next time, I might try using a 3/4 recipe instead of a half one to see if that improves the baking.

...and some English Muffins, too

That bread only used a tiny amount of the sourdough starter, so I mixed up some Sourdough English Muffins last night, too. The recipe calls for all white flour, but I snuck in a cup of my home-ground flour. I didn't have an English Muffin cutter so I cut my dough into twelve large squares with a knife. They still look and taste like an English Muffin.