Wednesday 14 May 2014

sourdough bread - by our own four hands


Mmm, the goodness that is a loaf of homebaked bread! I love how the scent of baking lingers and greets us the following day too.

All thanks to boyfriend - I would not have been brave enough to start this fascinating process of making the yeast starter from scratch then rolling up the sleeves to knead the first loaf just on my own. It's a creative experiment every time with an edible result, but it's easier than we first thought - it's a very addictive activity in fact!


We follow Paul Hollywood's recipe for the sourdough starter. There's also a lot of good tips to be found on how to make your own bread on his site. The recipe we use to make our bread is also a Paul Hollywood recipe, you find it here. We just do a 20% rye - 80% wheat version.

We share the workload of making the bread, especially with the kneading. The starter is a bit like a tamagochi living in our fridge - it needs checking and feeding!

It's totally worth bothering with keeping the starter alive - you make it once, and as time goes by the maturing starter root produces better and better bread. We've just finished our seventh loaf I think, and it was the best one so far.

The one below was probably number four or five, and I baked it upside down by accident...



Despite preconceptions and appearances, baking bread from scratch is an easy process actually. Once you tried it you will want to do it again and again! I recommend breadmaking for even nervous cooks like me - gaining confidence through baking and then eating a delicious loaf is priceless.

What kind of bread do you like to eat - do you have a special kind in your country?

4 comments:

  1. Oh, I wonder if I could carve out the time to do this?! It looks wonderful and delicious, and I do think that would be fun to do. Thank you for sharing this at my History & Home link party, so glad you did! Dawn @ We Call It Junkin.com

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    1. if you have some time it's really worth the effort. it's even better if you have a helper (or chief baker you can help, like in my case :) to go through the kneading process with. hope you'll get a chance to try it! thank you for hosting the fab linkie!

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  2. mmm! looks good! well done both of you! x

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    1. thanks Evdokia! *sending you a virtual slice* :)

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