I bought some rye flour and thought I'd try it.
add 1 cup of water to one of rye flour, mix well, cover and leave somewhere warm for a day.
Now add another cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water............................".................................
Now add an equal weight of flour to the starter + 2 tbs of oil and 1 tsp of salt, mix well and knead (you may need a little warm water to get a soft sticky dough).
leave for 3 hours to rise then knead again.
After another hour place in an oiled loaf tin and bake at 190 for one hour then 170 for another 30 mins (cover top with oiled tin foil).
turn out of tin and leave to cool.
Bake another 499 and make a wall.
Actually it's just about edible and I did make a mess of the recipe (must have borrowed one of EJs blonde moments -getting to be bald in my case) -but even so.
Jeremy
a good sourdough starter is a difficult thing to cultivate, and a fine thing to treasure. you can also buy sourdough starters occasionally...
proper sourdough bread is not like a brick (although i once manage to make the same thing :o)
Derbex I am sure there was a discussion on here once before about sourdough bread........always fancied giving it a go meself!
Aha, found it!
http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/yabbse/index.php/topic,12005.0.html
Rye flour makes a wonderful bread, even with reg yeast. Mix it 1/4 rye, 3/4 strong white, and add some caraway seeds. MMMMMMMMMM yum
Did that bananagirl -and you're right it's yummy :)
Unfortunately that was what lured me into making the sourdough.
It's all my fault though as I forgot step 2 for a day (although the starter was active then) and so bunged the 2nd lot of flour & water in on day 3 gave it a couple of hours and the added the rest of the flour.
True act of genius was to forget the oil and salt and then try to add then in afterwards ::)
The starter was active though & I had some for lunch with pumpkin soup and it was OK, but I don't really like the taste much. Which is strange as we used to buy rye bread when sailing as it didn't go off. But I tried a bought loaf recently and didn't much like that either.
Jeremy
As the instigator of the previous thread I can assure you that it does become better with practice. Although I must admit for daily use for my sarnies I use my bread machine and dried yeast.
I would have to say that against the recipe in the DT I used 7 fl oz of water and not 4 as suggested. Indeed the guy who wrote the article even responded to my query and followed up my reply quickly to make sure I was doing OK.
I still haven't got it right but it is fun to experiment with your mix, water quantity, starter quantity, etc.
Let us know what your best recipe is.
OC
I had a go at making sourdough before Christmas, and ended up with a brick too ::)
I'll post my variant on the DT recipe:
Last thing at night mix together:
4 oz wholemeal brown
4 oz strong white
4 oz starter mixture (mine is rye flour based)
6-7 fl oz water
This is mixed to form a batter and left overnight, the next morning I add:
4 oz wholemeal brown
4 oz strong white
and one teaspoon of rock salt ground.
This is kneaded for 10-15 mintues until it is elastic.
Then shape it, I use a round 8 inch deep cake tin, slash the top and dust with rye flour.
Leave to rise, the greater quantity of water has an effect here, for 6-7 hours then bake for 45 minutes at 220C.
I have heard using a greater quantity of the starter has an effect as well. The DT tells you how to prepare the starter.