The house is filled with the wonderful smell of baking bread. If we were looking to move, today would be the day to show around prospective purchasers. Sadly, though, it’s not the smell of our sourdough. It’s beer bread – another experiment that I’ll write up here if it works.

So, how did our sourdough go? To be honest it was a bit mixed. I won’t go into the method here, as I don’t think the starter was vigorous enough, so I’ve put it back into a warm place, fed it some more and will try again tomorrow, by which time it’ll have had four days of being cared for in a larger bowl beside a warm radiator.

Our first attempt was yesterday and the loaves we baked came out far flatter than we’d been expecting. They were also a lot more dense (hence their low profile) – again probably because the starter wasn’t sufficiently active.

I don’t think that’ll be a problem next time around as already that starter is bubbling up like an Icelandic bog.

Nonetheless we cut one of our first attempts open and buttered it up to have with our fish and, you know what, it actually tasted rather good. Better than rather good – it was actually nice. And despite being a little dense it wasn’t nearly so hard as we had been expecting. The middle was a little chewy, but the crust was wonderfully crispy and dusted with flour.

For our first attempt at sourdough breadmaking I don’t think it was too bad, and I’d give us five out of ten. Next time, though, we must improve.

Related posts:

1. Our sourdough starter is maturing
2. Success with the sourdough bread
3. Starting to make sourdough bread