Sourdough each week

 Each week or every six to nine days I bake two or three loaves of bread. One for now the rest for the freezer to be brought out later in the week.  The routine is well established now and fits in nicely with a day at home.  Each part of the process only takes a few minutes and very often the loaves are baked either before or after our evening meal, which on that day also uses the oven.

Although I have baked plenty of bread using 'naked' baskets, I now find that using the cloth liners that came with the small baskets, and a piece of drapey muslin for the longer basket works really well.  The baskets are allowed to stand draped with another large tea towel, so that the loaves underneath develop a skin.  This then remains intact when turned out, ready to have the slashes which allows the confined dough to expand in the oven, as they hit the heat but have the steam from the roasting dish below keep the outskin moist and flexible for a few minutes.

Very often recipes are adjusted using a blend of different flours, in these for instance I exchanged strong wholemeal flour for wholemeal spelt and a couple of handfuls of mixed seeds which I had soaked for a few hours.  Last week a couple of friends came over, and I decided to make a 'posh tea', starting off with sandwiches made from sourdough baked in standard loaf tins. Alison was so surprised by sourdough with mild flavour and softness of the crust and crumb and declared that they were the best she had tasted.  She had only had sourdough bread with hard crusts and big holes before. I explained that yes that I made that type to start with, but we prefer our bread softer, with more flavour from the special wheats, and with other ingredients too such as milk and eggs, and also make 'sweet sourdoughs' too.  It was goat's cheese and smoked salmon and a variety including cucumber and cheese, and softe cheese, and thinly sliced tomato all with fresh chives from the garden, and garnished with pea shoots from my pots.

My tin of choice for this are Silverwood tins and now know the weight of dough needed to get the rise above the rim which is to my liking. For Soudough the rounded corners work better for me compared to my tins with square sharp corners, but I keep those for cake or yeasted loaves.

Other loaves of course are baked, non sourdough, and often buns. I love the rhythm of the hand needing and the wonderful aromas of the dough and baking.