I used to make sour dough bread every week. Since my handyman husband doesn't care for sour dough bread for toast in the mornings and rarely eats sandwiches that left the majority of the bread for me to eat by myself. I decided that I would eat less bread if I just didn't make it and it would also make less work for me. I have learned over the past months that I miss having the fresh bread around to share with others when they are under the weather, have lost a loved one, or are just going thru a difficult time. So, last week I started another batch of starter. I mixed up the potato flakes, sugar, yeast and warm water....it bubbled just a little at first then died! I mixed up another batch with the same results. I finally decided that, even though it was still in date, my yeast was not being as active as it needed to be. I bought more yeast and mixed up, yet another, batch of starter. When I stirred it, I found that most of the yeast was stuck to the bottom of the jar so I added a little more. I left the kitchen for about an hour and when I came back I found the quart jar, with only 1 cup of water and the few dry ingredients, had overflowed onto the counter!! Since I lost some of the liquid, I went ahead and added a little warm water to it and let it work....on the 4th day (you're supposed to wait until the 5th day) I thought it looked hungry so I went ahead and fed it. It bubbled up just like it was supposed to. YEAH
Yesterday afternoon I mixed up just enough dough for 1 loaf of bread, put it in a tupperware bowl and locked down the lid. About and hour later I heard a loud POP! I knew what it was the bread was working and expelled enough gas to pop the lid off of the tupperware. That's a good sign!! I let it rise until bedtime and then punched it down and put the dough into bread pans. I used to get 1 medium size loaf, but since it was rising so well, I took a little dough out and made a mini loaf too.
I put the pans in the oven with the light on over night to rise and then baked them first thing this morning.
They look kind of weird!! I'm going to knead the dough a little more next time as they didn't turn out smooth like they used to. Every new batch of starter makes the bread turn out different so there is a little adjustment period each time you start over. Glad I only made a recipe for 1 loaf and hadn't planned on giving away any this time. Hopefully the next loaf will look better!! (Note: this loaf was a little too salty--I bought some new measuring spoons and it had a 1/2 Tablespoon which I used for the first time. I think I'll go back to using a teaspoon + 1/2 teaspoon). Now to get my feeding schedule worked out for the starter.
