Monday, June 22, 2009

Sourdough Non-starter

Over the weekend, my friend brought some fabulous walnut and dried apricot bread from her local bakery. I was so smitten with the idea, I wanted to try to replicate the bread from home since her local bakery is about an hour away. I do love bread, but a two hour round trip is still a little much for me.

In Sweden, there are not a whole lot of sourdough bread lovers. Swedish breads tend more towards molasses-sweetened breads which have a nice chewy texture (from the oat flour), but sourness isn't a highly sought quality. However, they're very into more sour-tasting rye and crispbreads.

When researching breads, I realized that I did want that bit of a tang in my bread and realized I needed a sourdough starter. I had made it once before a zillion years ago, but my then boyfriend wanted to throw it away (why are Swedes so paranoid about the refrigerator?), and I succumbed to the pressure.

In any event, now I have lots of ingredients (I'm planning on a walnut, golden raisin and apricot bread), but no bubbly starter. I have a cup of water combined with a cup of normal white flour in a plastic yoghurt container with my rice serving spoon stuck in it (you're not supposed to use metal), and about a 4-7 day wait for my starter to start going.

I guess the most useful thing I learned today is that bovete is buckwheat, which I accidentally took for oat flour havregryn. Galettes for everyone!

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