Sourdough and mushrooms update…

Its been a while since I posted, just a lot of things going on at once! That doesn’t mean we haven’t been working on our projects though.

First up our sourdough… Our wholemeal starter has taken off nicely, it has that recognisable sour smell and is very bubbly when we feed it. We also used a bit of this starter to make a white flour sourdough as it is usually all white bread we eat. 

Now these are photos from this morning when I fed them. (Top photo wholemeal and bottom photo white flour). You would think from looking at them that the white is the better off the two, or I would anyway, but that’s not the case. No matter how I adjust the feeding our white one always seems on the edge of too watery  and doesn’t give our bread the rise we want. It also doesn’t make nearly as tasty a loaf in my opinion. 

The wholemeal on the other hand seems to be getting better as the weeks go on. Its given us tasty bread but only when mixed with white flour for baking. I am currently sitting waiting to put a full wholemeal loaf in my oven but as it has barely risen, I’m not expecting great things!

Here’s how our loaves have differed from the first attempt to the most recent.

Our first attempts. We followed an online recipe meant to give you two free form cobs. Mine is the top loaf which I think looks like some sort off weak clawed wolverine has attacked it after sitting on it..  Lovely husband’s is the bottom and he clearly has a much better slashing method than me! (Should I be worried?! Lol). Both were incredibly tasty but almost as flat as a pancake. You also needed more upper arm strength than I possess to saw through the crust which felt like it was made from brick. I managed to saw my fingers as my loaf went flying over the kitchen worktop, no bread tastes better with added blood… Minor injury only though, I still thankfully have all my digits.

Week two could have been our piece de resistance if only we’d known a few things. As you can see we abandoned the idea of free forming our bread. That’s a level of creativity that we’re just not ready for clearly! Instead we used the same recipe but whacked the full mixture into a loaf tin. Now this had the advantage of stopping the loaf being a pancake but it did mean I just had to guess as to the baking time- problem one. Husband (having been designated official bread slasher) performed his job admirably as you can see and gave the bread room to rise. That’s when I encountered problem two- my oven shelf was too high. Our poor loaf was doing as asked and rising up magnificently only to be stunted as it hit the top of my oven. I had to take it out ten minutes earlier than I wanted too as it was starting to burn from contact with the hot metal. This meant that the middle wasn’t as cooked as it should have been. It was a hundred times better than the previous week though.

Then our first loaf using the white flour starter. It just didn’t rise as much as it should have, there was also a big gap in the side where it decided to split in the oven. It was alright but in both looks and flavour I found it a bit lacking.

Finally today’s loaf-  I don’t know how that is going to turn out yet so will keep you apprised of the situation! Overall im currently counting our starters as a success but our bread making skills a work in progress.

Then we have our mushroom kits. We bought three of them and all three have produced some mushrooms for us. I’ve been amazed at how quickly they go from little pinheads to full blown mushies. One night they completely exploded up!

After the initial harvest though most of the growing seems to have stopped. We’ve also found that our mushrooms are only growing at the uncovered edges of the kit and not all over even though the mycellium is everywhere. I’m currently looking for methods to transfer the spores to a more sustainable habitat and hopefully get them growing again. There’s a glut of information online but I’m struggling to wade through all of it to see what’s best.. All advice as always is welcome!
Kimmy x