Our first sourdough rye from the new starter!

Before Christmas I started a sourdough starter after a friend we gave a loaf of bread to for the holidays mentioned wanting to learn a bit about sourdough bread. I haven't had a sourdough starter in about 4 years. I had become quite proficient but when I changed to grinding flour at home for our breads, I had a lot of trouble with the sourdough and ended up dumping it when we moved to Maine anyway. Poor starter!!

Anyway. I have gotten really good at my poolish start breads using nothing but fresh ground flour (in fact, it's all we use for anything now) and after this conversation, I realized I'd had the talk I needed to get me back into sourdough. It was the right push at the right time. I started this sourdough using some raisins in cheesecloth as the catalyst, that and good old fashioned time. This starter is fashioned almost entirely after Nancy Silverton's at La Brea, but I made some minor modifications. For one, I used raisins instead of grapes, as grapes are out of season and the only organic ones are coming from Chile right now, which seems ridiculous to me. Organic but flown four thousand miles and in the wrong season up here? So, I scrabbled about in my cupboard and wrapped up some nice organic raisins in cheesecloth and tossed them into the flour and water mix. They are CA grown and only flown 1200 miles! ha! It's one of those somewhat ironics compromises :-) Talking to another friend in town a couple of days ago I was surprised to hear that she too had just begun a sourdough starter using raisins. A nice serendipity!!

Anyway. The other major modification I made was to cut the recipe in half to start, and then once the starter was ten days old and really ready to feed to prepare for baking, I cut it in half again. I hate to throw out so much starter as you prepare for baking, and by cutting it in half like this (quarter of the original recipe), I've discovered that the amount to skim off after feeding is just right to make a batch of sourdough pancakes that Shawn and I have grown very very very fond of!! Now there is no waste, which pleases me greatly.

I used the other half of the ready to feed starter to make a rye starter, which I've always wanted to do since baking school as well as one to continue on with the wheat. The rye only needed three more days before being ready to bake and by a stroke of niceness, was ready to bake with on New Year's Eve. We attended a small dinner and New Year's Eve gathering with friends, with soups and bread on the menu (along with some single malt scotch and excellent wine...I can see what all the fuss is about when it comes to single malts. Wow!! Yummy!). I made up my first batch of sourdough rye with lots of caraway and hoped for the best. It was SUPERB and was welcomed with much kindly ado at dinner. I paired it with a mushroom barley soup and was so pleased with everything. We had a wonderful dinner with friends, welcomed the new year with funny movies on a big screen, and the sourdough was a success.

These loaves are also my first attempt at this shape (go figure!). Usually I just form boules. These loaves were excellent. I made a batch of rye and raisin rolls with a second round of baking with the starter earlier this week and they came out even better. Wonderful rise and very good flavor. I should be baking once a week at least with each starter. I have a pair of wheat loaves in the fridge retarding overnight for a baking in the midday tomorrow and am looking forward to seeing the results. My first wheat sourdough loaves I botched slightly - edible results but kind of funny. :-0 The nice thing about bread baking is that the worst results are pretty darned tasty. :-)