This'll be quick. No one wants to dwell on this one, trust me — 100% Sourdough Rye.
I'm baking my way through Peter Reinhart's award winning book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, along with a number of other amateur bakers (I'm not sure how many are still with us, and a few have finished!). Want to join in the madness, or just learn more about this semi-crazy undertaking? Check out the following links:
- Pinch My Salt BBA Challenge page—master resource for the challenge
- Buy the Book Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart
- List of Breads See what's coming up.
- Blogroll See who's baking. Great list of some amazing foodie (and not-necessarily-foodie) blogs.
- Flickr Group Photos, photos and more photos!
- Twitter Search for #BBA to find challenge tweets.
At the same time, you also make a rye soaker. This consists of coarse rye and water. I didn't have coarse rye, so I used the bran I'd sifted out of the white rye. Don't know if that had anything to do with what happened later, but I wasn't sure what else to use.
The next day, the firm starter and soaker combine with the final dough — more white rye, salt, caraway seeds (if so inclined, I used charnushka seeds instead), and water.
I knew things were going horribly wrong when my firm starter did basically NOTHING and looked like this:
It was the strangest texture—gritty, pasty, unlike any starter I've seen.
And the dough didn't improve from there. It was the same thick, pasty, gritty consistency of the firm starter. There wasn't a hint of gluten in this blob of dough.
Again, I got no rise out of this dough after 4 hours so I just "shaped" them, proofed for 2 hours (waste of time) then baked them.
"shaped" loaf
TA-DA! I made bricks. Weapons, really. You could inflict some serious collateral damage with these bad boys. I did eat some. The flavor wasn't horrible, but I about broke my bread knife trying to slice it, so you can imagine what chewing it was like.
I wasn't the only one in the BBA group that ran into this scenario. I think the biggest chuckle I got was from Mags at The Other Side of 50. Check out her post; it's a hoot!
Like Mags, I threw my bread out for the birds. I really hope I didn't kill any with that bread!
It gets better from here, thank goodness. I've since made the next two breads with much better results. Now I just have to post them!