h1. Happy Birthday to My Sourdough Starter

Today, Fri, Jan 30, 2015, my sourdough bread starter turns five-years-old. 

I took an eight-hour bread-baking class at Zingerman's bakehouse. Near the end of class, we assembled a simple mix of all-purpose flour and water in a plastic container to begin our starter, which formed over the next few days.

So my starter was "born" in Ann Arbor, but it has grown up in Toledo.

I fed my starter two days ago. I used some of that to create a quick bread dough recipe. No instant yeast used. I'm trying Lahey's method to sourdough bread.

I set up the bread dough at 2:40 p.m.

I fed my starter again earlier, and I set that up around 1:00 p.m.

For today's bread dough recipe: I used:

* 300 grams of King Arthur all-purpose flour
* 100 grams of King Arthur white whole wheat flour
* 320 grams of water
* 10 grams of fine grain sea salt
* 160 grams of my firm, sourdough starter

I let the starter soak in water for about an hour, so that the starter would be mostly dissolved.

Process:

* mixed dry ingredients in a bowl
* added the water-starter slurry
* incorporate in bowl
* dumped dough onto counter and kneaded for maybe a minute
* placed dough ball into lightly olive-oiled Pyrex  bowl

It was a super sticky, sloppy dough ball. Unsure if this will work.

Fermented at room temp in the low to mid 60s for ~8.5 hours. Then I placed the dough in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, I let the dough warm for about 90 minutes. Dumped, shaped, and proofed for 2 to 2.5 hours in a linen-lined, oval-shaped basket. Then baked as normal.

Stats immediately from the oven:

* length = 8.5 inches
* width = 6.75 inches
* height = 3.5 inches


 #bread