Sourdough Bread

Yesterday I made my first attempt at making sourdough bread.  I made my own starter from a recipe that can be found here: Starter Recipe http://whatscookingamerica.net/Bread/SourdoughStarter.htm, I split it 50-50 with bread flour and whole wheat AP flour.
It was easy to make and feed over the last week and based off the smell and look I figured it was time to take a crack at the bread.

My starter

For the bread I used a slightly modified recipe that I found online, very basic and as simple as I could make it.  How I made it is listed below with comments after the recipe.

4 3/4 cups bread flour

3 tablespoons white sugar

2 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast

1 cup warm milk

2 tablespoons melted in milk

1 1/2 cups sourdough starter

Dry ingredients

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and dry yeast. Add milk and softened butter or margarine. Stir in starter. Mix in up to 3 3/4 cups flour gradually, you may need more depending on your climate.
2. Turn dough out onto a floured surface, and knead for 8 to 10 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turn once to oil surface, and cover. Allow to rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in volume.
3. Punch down, and let rest 15 minutes. Shape into loaves. Place on a greased baking pan. Allow to rise for 1 hour, or until doubled.
4. Pre-heat oven to 425 and bake 25-30 minutes until nice and golden brown.  Let rest on pan for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack to finish cooling.



Before baking

5. While still warm slice and dip in soup or slather with favorite butter or spread

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Before rising

So this bread turned out crusty both in the boule and the loaf, which is something that I really wanted.  This was helped by the high heat that it cooked at.  The inside pretty dense and probably could have cook a bit longer or next time I will substitute half of the bread flour for all purpose flour.  It was also very hearty because I was feeding the starter whole grain flour, again I am slowly switching that to more AP flour as well.

All in all a really tasty and hearty bread that was worth the time for all the rising. I do wish it was more sour but that comes down to the starter, more on that in a later post.