Secrets of the Bread - mysteries of the fridge - treasures of the oil

It's been far too long since I posted about bread the last time. I've also finished our greenhouse, but it's another thing and I'll write a post about it later.

Now it's once back to the roots - to sourdough. Well, it would have worked better in Finnish, as sourdough is "hapanjuuri" and "juuri" is root. Basically sour roots. Ha ha.

Super funny.

As we Finns always are.

However, now back to the baking.

I dug up my old sourdough from the back of the fridge. It looked almost moldy, but the smell was fresh and sour, so I knew it should be good to use. This is usually the best sign if the sourdough is still happy and living or dead and ruined.

As silly as it might sound, the sourdough is alive and that's why it really makes a difference if it lives or not.

I scooped up almost all of the sourdough to a baking bowl, as I really don't need almost any sourdough to create a new one to the fridge. I'm always saving a bit of the sourdough to keep the good culture alive.

The current sourdough I'm using is few months old. I wish I would have marked up the date I started the sourdough so I can surprise my future grandchildren with it.

Or it'll just die at some point.

Then I just added more flour (wholegrain) and water to the sourdough can and the baking bowl and mixed them. It's having pretty much the same consistency as porridge has.

At least the kind of porridge I enjoy the most.

I put the can back to the fridge and left the sourdough baking bowl for 8 hours on the table, so the natural yeast in sourdough had time to spread in the dough and it started to make small bubbles.

Then add a bowl of strawberries.

...

Or don't. I bought a lot of strawberries so I had time to eat them while waiting for the sourdough to get activated.

Ok now you can see the bubbles in the photo above.

I think it's pretty awesome and bubbly dough is a secret fetish of mine.
_{Not a very good secret as I told you all. Luckily nobody reads my posts. Include word "I love penis in my butt" in your comment and you might win a dick pic from me!}

I've started to bake by adding a certain amount of flour in the dough and then adding water afterwards. It's easier to add more water while handling the dough than to remove some, so slowly adding the water until the dough has correct consistency is achieved is my trick.

Doesn't always work though. A drip of water turns "dry as desert" to "wet as women around me". Which is still pretty dry.

Mix mix mix mix.

I wish I could buy a kitchen aid but I can't yet.
Before that I'll need to buy...

1. a boat
2. furniture
3. new camera lenses
4. hookers
5. some more lenses

But this is why we get children. 13 minutes of mixing with slow speed.

One of my new "secrets" is the oil. I've started to use oil when baking as the bread is turning dry really quickly without the oil in it. It also makes the bread extend a bit less, but it's not a major issue with sourdough bread anyways.

So I'm adding salt and oil.

Then around 7 minutes of mixing with faster speed. I mixed a bit longer though, as I had so much fun when mixing.

At this point the dough seemed really good. My hands were oily so I didn't want to touch the camera, but I got you a photo when the dough was resting and rising under the cover.

Once again, something like 5-6 hours of waiting, as the sourdough is in no rush.

I was getting really tired, as I was baking the bread a bit before midnight. I decided to make a single, large loaf of bread so this is what it looked like.

It looks like life.

A bit ugly.

I lifted it in the fridge to rise in peace overnight.

Next morning, not too early in the morning, I picked the bread tray out from the fridge. It had risen a bit, mostly to the sides and not upwards (as the amount of oil had made the dough super soft) and it looked real nice.

I heated the oven to 250 C and when it was ready, I put the bread there. After 5 minutes, I lowered the temperature to 200 C.

The finished bread was perfect. You can see my secret fetish, the air bubbles in the dough in the finished bread. The crust was nice and taste was full of flavor. Nice and sour.

Perfect with butter and cheese.

And yes, the new things which I haven't used before were

1. Using oil in baking
2. Using the fridge

In our new apartment we have a big enough fridge so we can have bread rise in the fridge. Super-duper awesome. The slower rising in the cold is giving bread a better flavor.

I recommend testing it out if you have the chance.