Trying My Hand at Whole Wheat Sourdough

 I have talked about it a bit, but I had a bad, bad experience with homemade sourdough bread. When I was in 7^th grade my mother, in her eccentric wannabe hippy days, decided to expose us kids to the Sourdough Experience.

You have to understand—I had really only eaten the low-end white bread for my entire life up to this point. It wasn't bad (to me), either, except for the pbj absorption problem with school lunches. But I digress.

I'm not sure why sourdough—although, come to think of it, sourdough was less work and expense than other traditional artisan loaves. [Nowadays “artisan” is a compliment.] But there were definitely some problems with our Sourdough Experience.

The first was the bread pan—it was too big for the amount of dough placed therein. After the big rise, the bread reached about halfway up the pan. This made for a decidedly short slice of bread—maybe 1 ½ inches. The sandwich made with this bread was an impractical size and the proportion of bread-to-crust was off. Plus it didn't fit into the baggie very well.

The second problem was the texture of the bread, along with the color. It was, well, transparent. I think it may have been that the dough was too moist, but whatever the issue, the bread was kind of see-through. And kind of a pale grayish whitish blueish. It was neither appealing to the eye, nor appetizing.

The third problem was that it was really, really sour. Our former sandwich bread was pretty much tasteless, so that made it inoffensive. Not so with Mom's sourdough. It was extremely offensive to the olfactory sense, my own and my classmates' as well.

Silly-looking, transparent, and smelly. But wait, there's more.

It freezes nicely!!

Peanut butter and jam, the lunchtime fare, does not go well with sourdough. Today I might try a savory combination of peanut butter and pickles or something like that on sourdough, or even something meaty. Pbj just didn't work with Mom's sourdough.

In my first marriage my husband always talked about his friend's great homemade sourdough bread, he just couldn't get enough of it. But I relived the traumatic 7^th grade year of lunches every time he brought it up. I knew in my head that there was good sourdough out there, but I just couldn't embrace the concept then, it being so fresh in my memory.

See recipe: myfamilyrecipes.livejournal.com

And then, just 40 years after the trauma (Really! That was 1972!), my friend Liz came along. Liz loves real food. And she makes all the bread for her family of 9: whole wheat sourdough. I got her recipe and method in October, when I had my broken ankle and couldn't entertain the thought of making anything, including the bed. Her instructions (she had taught a class) were so thorough and easy to follow that I couldn't resist the inner challenge. In April I went ahead and got some starter from Liz, and off I went.

Great slices--sandwiches look appetizing.

The first loaves were fine, but a little short—though not too wide because I appropriately used an 8”x4” pan. And when I offered some to my son, Zach, and his wife, Julie, I explained that it wasn't that great, not what you may expect, a little heavy, not like at the store, she chastized me: “It tastes just like sourdough, don't sell yourself short!” (God bless her.) And the rest of the family ate it all up.

And now I am a seasoned whole wheat sourdough maker!! And it's good! And pretty! With great color and a delicious crunchy and satisfying crust! And it makes excellent toast. 

Would you care for some starter?