RANDOM comments

[Jane]

Clouded over now. Could do with some of Helena’s carrot cake and a cuppa. hint hint..
Had to pop out this morning...the traffic...nightmare... :@  and it was so cold. good to be in the warm again. Might do a weather blog.

[Helena]

The carrot cake was a hit here. I'll have to make another one. But I have another adventure on the docket first.

Baking bread today. I'm working on a gluten-free sourdough. My last attempt was a cinnamon raisin version artisan loaf. The flavor is good, but it is still too dense so back to the drawing board today. I miss real sourdough. The gluten free breads are pretty sorry in comparison, but have to be GF for a time yet. This try will be a batter style that includes yeast after the autolyse (flour soaking) step. If it comes out good, I'll post a pic.

[Sandy]

Haven't tried glten free yet, a friend told me it was pretty tasteledd compared to normal bread which put me off wanting to try it..

[Helena]

I would say that its not worth trying unless you have to be gluten free. It is a poor shadow of the real thing, even when it comes out well. Sometimes, a rice cake is a more satisfying choice.

[Sandy]

I had someone say it was like eating cardboard..

f you make normal sour doigh bread let me know, would love to try the real Americam sour dough, I saw a programme on tele that showed the sour dough starter was like over 100 years old, they rook a little from the starter to make bread and added more new to it, not sure of the exact procedure now, or if they were for real about the age of the starter..

[Helena]

I was making great spelt sourdough up till the time I had to be gluten free. I only do whole grains, so my loaves are denser than a white flour sourdough, but spectacularly light for whole grain. And incredibly delicious.

My starter is a couple years old. I call him Ted. He makes some pretty awesome Ted Bread.

Right now, he's sitting in his jar in the back of the fridge waiting to be activated again.

[Jane]

Morning. Piddling with rain..although we do have snow showers forecast.

All this talk of fresh bread makes me feel hungry. I shall have to dig out some recipes and post them in my recipe section for my members.

edit....it’s snowing! yayyyyyy! snowball fight?

[Sandy]

I was making great spelt sourdough up till the time I had to be gluten free. I only do whole grains, so my loaves are denser than a white flour sourdough, but spectacularly light for whole grain. And incredibly delicious.

My starter is a couple years old. I call him Ted. He makes some pretty awesome Ted Bread.

Right now, he's sitting in his jar in the back of the fridge waiting to be activated again.

P'd like to learn more about sourdough and the starter, the TV programme I saw they reckoned the starter was over 100 years okd, I reckon I should've done my pastry chef training too..

[Sandy]

I finally remembered where the bakery is, the programme I saw was travelling Route 66 and stopped in Chicago, apparently the bakery burned down over 100 years ago and a brave staff member went in and saved some of the sourdough starter they were using, it seems the same sourdough starter is still being used and added to now.. I can't remember the name of the bakery, but I seem to remember it was very popular amongst the locals for it's bread, maybe you know of it Helena, that or know someone who has been there or knows it..

[Helena]

Fun story. I've heard of other starters that are even older, one was from the frontier days of the Alaska gold rush.

The interesting thing about sourdough starter is that it takes on the local strains of yeast in the air. So even if you got, for instance, some San Francisco starter, it would change in time as your local bugs propagated in it.