Saturday, January 19, 2008

Sourdough


I started a sourdough culture from scratch a couple of weeks ago. I grew up eating sourdough bread made by my mom and I love the acidic taste. The starter my mom has is supposedly 50-100 years old. My starter is only 14 days old but it did pretty well. I made some no-knead bread today using starter for 20-30% of the dough and it turned out great. Hopefully Winnie (our dog) won't get these loaves off the counter.
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Monday, January 14, 2008

No Knead Bread




I've been making bread more lately. These two loaves were made using the no-knead recipe that's been popularized by Mark Bittman at the NY Times. Drew sent me a tip about the America's Test Kitchen (ATK) version of this bread. I made both breads. The ATK version uses less liquid (66% liquid) than the NY Times version (86% liquid). The ATK version also uses a little beer and vinegar in their recipe to mimic some sourdough characteristics. As expected, the dough with more liquid had a more open crumb which I like. I could taste the beer/vinegar combo in the ATK loaf, but I don't think it made that much of a difference. Both loaves are good but I like the simplicity of the Bittman version. Easy to make in the middle of a busy work week.
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