Sourdough bread

One of my new hobbies has been renewing an interest in bread making and in particular using a sourdough starter. This is a mix of flour and water that ferments and becomes active with ‘good bacteria’ and yeasts. It is fed twice daily to build up its strength and from then on can be put in the fridge to slow the action and be brought out to use in the baking process.
As with all new hobbies this is a learning curve and my first loaves were like frisbees. A bit close textured and with little rise. However I persevered, read books, articles and blogs, joined Facebook groups and eventually I started to produce what I think is an enjoyable sourdough loaf. The texture is fairly airy and it has a crispy crust. There are many advantages of using a starter like this. The taste is super and not too sour, the bread is more easily digested because of the action of the yeasts and bacteria than standard bread and it has good keeping qualities.
I am going to see a friend in Gloucestershire today for a belated birthday lunch and decided to take her a small boule of my bread and a jar of homemade marmalade. I took photos yesterday of the various stages in the process.

The first photo is of the first mix of strong white flour, water, starter and salt. This is all that goes into making a plain white sourdough boule.It is a rather shaggy mix that is left for an hour to let the process start. This is called ‘autolyse’

For the next couple of hours I performed a series of stretch and folds every thirty minutes or so but timing is not that important at this stage. The dough is grabbed at one side, pulled upwards and stretched over to the other side of the bowl. The bowl is turned and the stretch is repeated about 8-20 times. All the work is done in the bowl and I don’t do a traditional knead.

Afte a couple of hours the bowl is covered and then left to prove, usually overnight at room temperature. I cheated yesterday and proved on the dough setting in my oven to speed up the process so I could bake this morning.

After the overnight prove I would generally shape and place in a wooden basket called a banneton. This is put in the fridge to develop flavour and firm up prior to baking. However last night I had speeded up the process, shaped and put into the bannetons and into the fridge.

This morning I turned out the dough, score the top and baked. I put the dough in an enamel roaster with a lid. This goes into the cold oven which I then set at 240c fan for 30 minutes then reduce to 220cfan. As this was a small boule I baked for 45 minutes but my normal sourdough loaves bake for a total of 60 minutes.

This is the final result which I will wrap in baking paper tied with string. I also have a jar of homemade Merry marmalade (with gin) for her.

So, that’s the start of my day. I’m looking forward to lunch out and then this evening a concert by the King Singers at the Malvern Theatre.

Catherine

Still got Blogger problems and UPDATE

This post is just to say thank you for all the comments on my last two posts.
I am still having problems with answering the comments individually in Blogger. For those of you who are more expert in these things I did the following.
I went into Blogger settings, then email and comments. When the setting is ‘embedded’ I see the reply button below each comment but if I click this it says comment as Blogger profile but without my photo and my replies just disappear even if I try to log in again ( this does not work!). If I change the setting to ‘full page’ there does not seem to be a reply button. Very frustrating.
So, while I investigate and send off various messages, please bear with me. As they sometimes say on the phone ‘ your call is very important to us...’.
I shall try again this evening.
More in frustration than hope,

Catherine x

4pm. I seem to have fixed the problem on my iPad. I use the default Safari browser normally and after searching the net The answer seemed to be to download another web browser so I installed Chrome from the App Store and voila, I am still logged in on Google and can reply to your comments. I am no expert but it looks like it may be the answer. Thank you for your patience x

Singing

Good morning everyone (anyone?).

I love Sundays! Even though I have been retired for almost 20 years (I gave up working at the age of 47) I still love the weekend feeling. It is a day of possibilities but with fixed points. Generally we enjoy a traditional lunch but there is time for a walk or hobbies and lots of time for reading the Sunday papers.
Sunday now includes choir practice at 4.30pm. I have always loved singing. I suppose I have sung in various choirs since the age of eight when I started in a Primary school choir with the formidable Mrs Ness, a third year teacher. She was not well liked by the children there as she was known to be strict. In the 1950s teachers were still using physical punishments for minor misdemeanours in school. She was fairly keen on a thwack with a wooden ruler on the back of the legs. Luckily I avoided her wrath! However she was a good musician. Isn’t it amazing how details of the past come flooding back when you write about past times? I even remember some of the songs. We sang The Ash Tree and Waltzing Matilda at a competition once. Anyway, I digress.

I lived in Northern Ireland from about 1983 until 1990 where I joined the local Parish church choir in Bangor, Co.Down. The church had a fine musical tradition and it was an honour to sing there. When I moved to Penarth in South Wales and married Mike I joined the Cavatina choir. This was a fairly large SATB choir who sang a varied repertoire.

One of the attractions of the Malvern area is the huge musical tradition. The English composer Elgar was born near here and the Malvern Hills inspired many of his compositions. I joined the Powick Community Choir about eighteen months ago. It is a large SATB choir under the musical directorship of Tom Wells, a local councillor and former teacher of music. We sing a varied repertoire from Mozart to Mercury. Tom is a talented composer himself. Our main concerts are sung every Christmas at Stanbrook Abbey where we sing six concerts over four nights, a mammoth task. Stanbrook is now a hotel but it has retained a large former chapel in its original state and the acoustic is magnificent.
Singing is well known for its positive effects on mental health and well-being. It has been a constant in my life and whatever problems I might have are forgotten for the couple of hours singing with others. I can not recommend it enough.

Sabrina Voices

So, that’s today sorted. The papers, some ironing (hateful), last nights postponed Burns Night supper for lunch then choir practice at 4.30.

Click on this to hear the choir

Christmas at Stanbrook

Where to start?

There may be a few people reading this who think I simply disappeared in 2015! My brother’s death then a rather protracted house move meant I felt exhausted and just too tired to bother with writing a blog. I feel quite guilty that I have enjoyed reading the blogs I subscribe to and was giving nothing back. Also, selfishly, I realise I have no record of the changes to my life for the last 4 years.
Well, all that is about to change. I have decided to start a new blog as I do less quilting now but I still enjoy some crafting.
Mike and I moved to a beautiful village in Worcestershire. I have new hobbies, new as well as old friends and family changes too. So many changes it is difficult to know where to start so for this first post I will tell you about our new house and the village.
Our house sale took forever which meant we had plenty of time to look around to see where we might like to live. I have two daughters, both with families, and a stepdaughter and family too, so we needed to be able to get to them fairly easily. My parents were living in Manchester too. We decided that somewhere in the Midlands with easy access to the M5/M6 corridor would suit best. At heart we both need the peace and quiet of the countryside but with the chance of making new friends and ntaking up new hobbies. After months of searching we decided that the area of south Worcestershire around Malvern suited us best. Small villages and market towns, a thriving music scene, beautiful countryside and almost equidistant from one daughter in the Lakes and one in Wiltshire with the others in between.
We had very few preconceived ideas about the type of house that would suit us after living at East Barn. We looked at Tudor cottages, converted barns, Arts and Crafts Edwardian houses but finally decided on a fairly standard design modern house in the heart of a popular village. The house purchase left us sufficient funds to do some building work, replace the boiler and make the house that would suit us for the foreseeable future.
Hanley Swan is picturesque. We have a village pub, a village green, a duck pond, a shop/post office, a village hall, a couple of churches and easy access to our nearest small town of Malvern. Many local groups use the village hall and I joined the local W.I. almost as soon as we moved.
So, a few photos.
Firstly, the sitting room before and after a new fireplace and redecoration

The outside looking away from the house in summer and winter.

 

The garden was totally enclosed at the back by huge evergreens which we had removed in the first year leaving a totally blank canvas so this is an ongoing project.

I’m sure that is quite enough for today. I’ve so much to tell you that this could go on for a long time. I’ll leave you with a sunset from earlier this week.

I hope you will follow along for a bit and please leave a comment so that I know someone has read the post. It feels a bit as if I am sending this out into the dark!

Catherine. xxx