Deflated by Bread Alone

Long ago, I had a sour dough starter my friend, Marsha, gave me. I kept it alive for many years but eventually killed it with neglect. Starters are like pets and kids, you have to feed them. I tried a couple of times to grow others but didn't succeed. I purchased a bread cookbook a few years ago called Crust & Crumb. It has master recipes in it to create fabulous bread. Or at least that's what it claims.The photos are fabulous and that's what sucked me in to buying it. All foodie's love food porn (sexy pictures of food).

So I decided to try to birth a starter. This book has a recipe that takes 5 days to create a starter. It basically uses flour, water and malt with some honey and raisin water thrown in. Raisin water consists of soaking raisins in warm water for 15 minutes and using the soaking water in the starter. The reason behind this is apparently the raisins have natural yeast on the surface (that white stuff on them, grapes have it too) and this helps get the starter started. Well, then I had a cup full of soggy raisins. I made Oatmeal Raisin bars with them.

BTW this is called a Barm in the book. Here is a quote from the author:  I refer to this starter throughout the book as barm to distinguish it from the milder levain starter. Barm is the English term for starter and is the root of the term barmy, which means "tipsy" or "ditzy". This is because the starter produces alcohol (ethanol, actually), which may rise to the top of the sponge if it is not stirred for a week or so. Alaskan gold miners used to skim off this alcohol and trade it with the local Indians for supplies. (I've been told it will give you a massive headache and hangover.) One of the tribes was called the Hoochinoo, and thus was born the term hooch as slang for whiskey. I guess it could also be used to run you car as well if it uses flex-fuel.

Anyway, after 5 days, there is then a 3 day process to get a sourdough baguette. Now I have had many failures at cooking. Exploding springrolls, unedible desserts (trying to go low-cal), cookies and cakes where I forgot the sugar or salt, so I am used to cooking fiascoes. But after 8 days I was hoping for a good baguette. Sadly, the four baguettes I baked were not edible. The dough just never rose correctly and it was dense and gooey. I made some tactical errors as well and as you can see by the photo looked pretty bad. However, the ends that were sort of cooked ok and tasted good, like sourdough. At least the oatmeal raisin bars were good.

I am not making the 3 day bread again, too much time. But I do think I have a viable barm that I am using today to make some bread that only takes half a day. Phew!