Sourdough

I've been trying and trying to make sourdough bread, with limited success. I've done a few passable semi-sourdough loaves (sourdough with added yeast), but when I tried plain sourdough it would sit for days, barely rising at all. When I gave up and added a bit of yeast it rose, but it was so sour it wasn't really nice.

Then Deb sent me a little bag of sourdough starter from Yoke Mardewi. I fed it over a few days then made a loaf with some of it and some of mine (because there wasn't much of Yoke's yet). Kept it warm in the car and hooray! beautiful sourdough bread.

Bread

I've been baking bread once a week since Louka started kindergarten. At first I tried the slow rise in the fridge overnight technique, but it wasn't working out for me. So I've gone back to the conventional way, and I'm getting nice bread for lunch twice a week.

Fig and walnut bread

The other day I felt like baking, so I made maple walnut bread from the Grab Your Fork blog. I had some dried figs that were a bit hard and dry so I soaked them a bit and bunged them in. It made a delicious bread for Pyengana sandwiches (though Louka preferred it made into fairy bread).