Anyone else bake bread?

[snowwhite]

I've been doing a bit lately, partly because it's cheaper than baking cakes (usually), but still baking, and I quite enjoy it, but while standard recipes have been ok (and I really like a freshly-baked crust!) I hadn't really come up with anything better than the local bread shop, and I'd sort of rather support them than my local supermarket (where I buy flour/yeast).

But yesterday/today I tried the first recipe in Brilliant Bread which is written by a finalist from the 3rd series of the Great British Bake Off, and it actually tastes different, and I like it - more like sourdough than a standard loaf. Two really important things he says are the wetter the better (for the dough) and you often don't need to knead. I've read the whole book and it's as much like a text book as a recipe book - I'm sort of hoping to be getting onto his sweet sourdough recipe for stollen, which involves frangipane rather than marzipan. This is sort of ironic since I originally made stollen on account of having some left-over marzipan, and I used Mary Berry's recipe, who was one of the judges on GBBO.

[wombatrois]

I guess that's a no!

I used to, until Dr W3 announced he was no longer eating bread. So that was the end of my sourdough days. I made my starter from scratch, which was really interesting*, and it was working really well, but you need to make bread every day or two for it to work well.

* not that it was something you could watch instead of TV, for example, but who knew there were so many wild yeasts around!

[sprite]

i think about it from time to time. i baked bread while writing papers when i was in university--the mix/rest/knead/ rest/bake cycle make for good work/relax rhythym.

[sprite]

but i haven't got back into it--if i do, i'd like to bake sourdough.

[shilgia]

I made a loaf of bread a few weeks ago. Was pretty good (not perfect, but especially the crust turned out very tasty) and also fun! That was a Paul Hollywood recipe.

[snowwhite]

Yeah, I'd like to try sour-dough, and I think you can just keep feeding it if you don't want to bake that day or whatever, but I just worry it'll turn into something like my kefir grains - I have far too many and don't drink much of the actual kefir (it's ok, but not fabulous, and I'm not motivated to put stuff in it - I want to give about half the grains away really).

Maybe I'd worry less about just throwing starter away, or using it all up every so often? Like I said, I want to be able to make the sweet sourdough Stollen recipe by Christmas. Problem is, Mr Snow doesn't really like sourdough bread.

[shilgia]

Is it hard to make your own kefir? I looove kefir, but any kind of dairy manipulation makes me worry that I’d be making something that makes you sick.

[snowwhite]

Not at all hard. Put grains in jug, pour over milk, wait 12-24 hours (leaving jug somewhere out of the light, to preserve vitamins), strain through plastic seive, drink kefir, re-use grains. You can leave the kefir and the grains (in milk) in the fridge between whiles. You can also freeze and de-hydrate grains you're not using. I should probably do that with some of mine, really.

[shilgia]

I guess the other thing is that I’m not sure I would enjoy kefir as much if I knew that it was milk I had left out of the fridge for 24 hours, if you know what I mean. It’s easy to forget that that’s how it was made when you just buy it from the fridge in the supermarket.

[snowwhite]

You can make it in the fridge too, it just takes longer. Which might not matter.

[yehyeh]

I make bread in a bread-maker. I like to try mixtures of different flours - white, wholemeal, spelt, potato flour, besan.

[sprite]

i like kefir, but really must try to find some hippies around here, as the only place i've seen selling the grain is charging well over a tenner for them.

with any luck, tomorrow i'll have Kefir quark, which will either explode my head with gut-healthy hipsterness, or be vile.