Meet Zed–my first bread experiment with my homemade natural starter. He’s yummy. No bread I’ve tasted at the local bakeries has this unique flavor, light sour. I could have left him in the oven just a little longer but he still has that great crispy crust and soft bready middle.
I swear the universe was urging me to try to make this bread. Robert, who works at Seitenblick Restaurant in Essen clued me in that their wonderful bread is made from a natural starter, which they are quite proud of. Now I need to learn how to make their tasty bread spreads. I forgot about it but then I got a newsletter from the foody blog, Chocolate and Zucchini and she has been talking about her developing obsession with creating delectable bread starters.
Me being the lazy type, I decided to buy a bag of natural starter from the store, which ended with disastrous results. I was just short of giving up the idea of good homemade bread but then got to reading about the procedure and it really isn’t that hard. So now I will name each bread batch starting with the letter ‘Z’ and working the alphabet backwards. Hopefully by the time I reach the letter ‘A’ the bread texture and flavor will be outstanding.
The starter used in Zed is about 6 days old. I had another starter going with non-organic flour and it didn’t make it beyond the leuconostoc stage and the water kept separating from the flour. The one that resulted in a nice lactic acid bacteria culture was made with organic flour and Munich tap water. I won’t name it just yet because I haven’t decided what I will call this pet of mine and we just started to get to know one another. It began with Alnatura Weizen Mehl Type 1050 and Alnatura Roggen Vollkorn Mehl.
Homemade Natural Starter Recipe Summary
from chocolate and zucchini
Day 1: 100g water, 50g rye flour, 50g wheat flour.
Day 2: 75g culture, 75g water, 25g rye, flour, 50g wheat flour.
Day 3 (only if culture has doubled): 75g culture, 75g water, 75g wheat flour.
Day 4 or 5: 75g culture, 75g water, 75g wheat flour.
Feeding: 15g culture, 35g water, 35g wheat flour.
(24hr before you want to make bread)
Sponge: 70g culture, 70g water, 70g flour.
Zed bread ingredients (ratio by mass 1:2:3: 2% flour mass):
100g sponge, 180-200g lukewarm water, 300g flour, 5-6g lavender sea salt.
I’m promised my starter will mature and hopefully my bread kneading technique will improve as well in the process. I love to discover those nice irregular honeycomb-like structure after I slice into a loaf of bread.
It looks delish. I wish I were this ambitious. I’ve always wanted to make homeade bread. Meanwhile, I’ll watch you work the alphabet backwards.
Does look good, albeit a lot more work than the no-knead bread recipe I use:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html
Wow, you’re braver than I’ll ever be! The idea of baking my own bread seriously intimidates me. But yours looks so yummy, I might be tempted to try!
I would die for good bread. All I know is that it needs time to make it. I had the chance to look behind the curtain of a large industrial bakery and they use a lot of ready made ingredients that allow them to produce much faster than in the traditional way. It´s not the kind of bread I want (and Brötchen are even worse!).
Do you need a special oven?
Um…wow….let’s have Zed for coffee today!
I am very impressed! Wouldn’t it be funny if you opened your own bread shop in Munich and just kicked all the other ones in the boo-tay! LOL!! DO IT!!!!