R.I.P. Sourdough

My first sourdough of the year was a dud.

It was supposed to smell like fresh paint. It smelled like rotting citrus. Not good. I had to chuck the whole thing in the garbage.

Undefeated, I decided to bake my first loaf of bread. A Moroccan anise loaf, which I have made many times.

But the gods are angry with me for not taking better care of my sourdough. It is not in the stars for me to succeed in my first baking endeavor of the year. They seek to humble me.

I look for my baking sheet to discover I can't find it.

I open up the oven to check my oven thermometer, only to discover that it is covered in caked-on gunk.

I am out of whole wheat flour and semolina, which I need for this recipe.

I will not be deterred from my plans. I will bake bread! I substitute with rye and unbleached white and cornmeal.
The bread rises beautifully, gently. The oven is hot and the breads go in.

Unfortunately, the oven isn't hot enough (which I can't tell because my thermometer is kaput) and so all my bread is doughy and bland. Unpalatable.

But the crust is nice. I rip the crust from its doughy innards and toast it inside the still warm oven. I slather on butter and bite down.

This is all I wanted, all I needed. I spit in the eye of the bread baking gods. I will have my bread and eat it too.

A new project.

After talking about it with a couple of people on a local message board, I have decided to start a recipe swapping blog. People can post their recipes, leave comments and create discussions, as well as ask for recipes from other bloggers.

It's called The Swap.

Check it out.

Keeping up appearances

In keeping up with my latest binge of doing things I have been planning to do for a while, I made this:



Brandied quinces. I saw a recipe for it in a Nigella Lawson book two or three years ago. I have been meaning to make it since I first saw it. I adore quinces. They are such an amazingly beautiful fruit and one of the oldest. But finding any recipes using them is not an easy task. Thankfully, with the advent of slow food and an interest in older and heirloom fruits and veggies, forgotten goodies such as quinces are finding their way to market.



I bought these from a small local organic farmer. They were downy and pretty and smelled wonderful when I first bought them. I have a large bowl filled with them in my kitchen. Every once in a while I will pick one up and just smell it. Heady, floral and sweet.

The recipe asks to let them macerate for at least six weeks.

See you in six weeks.

Finally...

It has begun.

Sitting in my closet is a day old sourdough starter.

For the past two months, I have been dreaming about bread. Making it, baking it, eating it. But I have been in a funk. Things have been keeping me from making bread. Excuses, procrastination, etc., etc. In other words, a total lack of motivation.

So last night, I decided that enough was enough. I took out the recipe for my starter, mixed in all the ingredients and laid the bowl in my closet to sit and ferment for the next couple of days.

Starter takes about a week to ferment. You add water to flour, cover with plastic wrap and leave it to ferment for a couple days. You then take out half of the starter, add fresh flour and water (this is called feeding) and leave it for another couple of days. When the starter smells like fresh paint, it's ready.

That's right. Fresh paint.

But once it's made, it keeps forever. You just have to feed the starte every couple of days and it will keep. You can keep it in the fridge (which slows down the fermentation process) or keep it out on the counter in a small sealed container.As the starter ages, it will develop in flavour and character. It is a living thing that grows, ages, develops. I have met people who have starters that were given to them by their mothers who received it from their mothers. My friend Micheal told me his mother had a starter and that she named it "Mum". "Go get the Mum," she would say.

It took me five minutes to make my starter.

I had been procrastinating about five minutes.

In 6 days, it will be ready and I will be baking my first sourdough bread.

Enough procrastination. It's time to make something worthwhile!