My first Bread with Sourdough...

Okay... this is a really difficult task for me: Ulrike is hosting this month's Bread Baking Day event and she chose breads "only leavened with sourdough, preferably from rye" as our challenge.

Well, I told you before that I am not a good bread baker... I only make French style breads and use yeast and even a bread machine to make the dough. I have NEVER EVER made a bread with sourdough!!!

For a beginner, it seems to be very difficult to start your own sourdough. I looked at Zorra's grape sourdough starter, and those bubbles really scare me... My sourdough might be even more hyperactive and explode in the kitchen - you never know! ;-)

So I decided to buy some sourdough - you can get it as a powder that is made of rye, and the package provides you with a recipe for rye bread. As I was too lazy to look up another recipe for rye sourdough bread and as I like risks and adventures (but no explosions in my kitchen!) I tried that recipe.

Here's my result:

-=========	REZKONV-Recipe - RezkonvSuite v1.4
Title:	My first Rye Bread with Sourdough
Categories:	Baking, Bread, Sourdough, Bread machine
Yield:	1 Small loaf (500 grams)

Ingredients

450	grams		Rye, finely ground
1	pack		Sourdough
1	pack		Dry yeast or 1/2 pack fresh yeast (21 grams)
335	ml		Water
1/2	teasp.		Salt
1/2	teasp.		Honey

Source

Recipe on the Package of "VITAM Sauerteig für Roggenbrot"

	Edited *RK* 08/29/2007 by
	Barbara Furthmüller

Directions

Mix all the ingredients except for the water. Pour some water into the mixture and mix it, then slowly pour some more water into it, and so on, until you have got a mouldable dough.

Let the dough rest in a warm place.

Heat oven to 200°C and bake the bread for about 1 hour.

If you want to use a bread machine: Use the program "wholemeal" and medium brownness.

=====

As the package didn't give any information about the time for the dough to rest before you bake it, I let it rest for about 2 hours. The volume didn't change much during that time though. Maybe I should have taken some more time to rest, or let it rest at a higher temperature, or use more liquid, or do some more kneading, or...

I just took it out of the oven, it is still warm. You see, it is a bit too compact, but it tastes like real rye bread. I like it. - It was my first try and I am content with the result!

As I don't like pure rye breads that much (I am from Southern Germany...) I think I will mix it with wheat or other cereals next time, or I might add some nuts or seeds.

Thanks to Ulrike for hosting this event, and helping me to make my first steps into sourdough bread baking, and thanks to mbg for the banner.

Update: As my bread contains yeast it does not really fit into this "only sourdough" blog event, so this is a noncompetitive contribution to BBD#3. Still, it was an intersting research and I hope that everyone enjoys reading about my experiment.