(no subject)

Yo, yhlee --too bad we're not quarantined in Nagoya right now...pose reference delivered right to your door. (OK so it's actually sushi delivered to your door, but they'll pose for you--from a safe distance--if you notify them ahead of time. I have priorities.)

Sourdough baking: complete failure! Yay!

Loaf of bread: dwarf bread. It has currently been sawn into thin planks and is at a low temp in the toaster oven in an attempt to dry it out enough for breadcrumbs. If that doesn't work, oh well. Either I didn't knead it enough, the starter wasn't active enough, or both. Probably both.

I also did one of the bread machine sourdough loaf recipes I found, where the starter is used more for flavor than leavening. It rose nicely, but collapsed, leaving a dense-ish brick. Haven't sawn into it yet as it's still warm. I think the problem with this one was that there was too much liquid. Oh well! As myrialux says, it's a learning process.

I've also harvested 1/2 cup of the white flour starter #2 and 1.5 cups of the buckwheat starter #3 so as to have enough for banana bread making--we have 3 bananas at pretty much the peak point for banana bread right now--and for buckwheat pancakes this weekend. We shall see what happens with those, although I expect they'll be fine. The banana bread is a quick bread that uses baking powder and baking soda for leavening, and the pancakes use baking soda.

I am also not incredibly optimistic about the pizza dough, but it has been THOROUGHLY kneaded and is in its 2-day resting/fermenting phase, so we'll see. The dwarf bread/curling stone had some holes in it, indicating there was at least some yeast giving it the old college try. (We have a backup plan if the pizza dough fails to dough.)