Kitchen Garden Forum

Apparently real bread week starts today (or tomorrow according to some sources). I used to make sourdough regularly but with two evacuations and 100 house moves the "mother" (ie the sourdough starter) didn't survive. I might start again and if anyone here is interested, we can go through the process together.

To get started on Day 1 mix 100g of strong white (bread) flour with 100ml tepid water. Simple, huh?

I am not a huge fan of Paul Hollywood as a person. I like him well enough but, you know what I mean, not star struck by him. However, I hugely admire him as a baker and have five of his books plus some duplicates (so I can have them both home and away rather than live without them).

Does anyone want to share a sourdough from scratch journey?

I make bread/dough using dried yeast, was looking to make sour dough but found the process to time consuming.

Each to their own and anything's gotta be better than some of the supermarket stuff. It's a bit of a "cheat" to use dried yeast for a sourdough-type of bread, but you're not going to have the bread police at your house checking up on you. So do what you want to do.

I use stock cubes, which is a crime in cheffy circles. LOL. Who cares? It makes my life easier.

But actually once you get going with your own sourdough it's not very time consuming, especially if you have a stand mixer. I find kneading dough as interesting as watching paint dry so I avoid it wherever possible.

My wife makes all our bread by the sponge method with flour from Shipton Mill. Dislikes PH recipes because they use excessive salt.

Hi Geoff,

Shipton Mill certainly has a good reputation. I've not had the opportunity to try and haven't been making bread for a while. But I'll take it up again and deffo try SM. (That's Shipton Mill not sado-masichism.)

I've not found PH recipes to have too much salt but it's all down to personal taste. Some people like things that others don't. There are some people on the telly that I rush to switch off but they must be popular with other people. Either that or the people responsible for making the programmes are completely out of touch with what the viewing public want.

I once had a nightmare - I was on a TV cookery competition, and Mary Berry kept poke-poking at the food I was making. This infuriated me and I yelled, "F*** off you interfering old bat". Everyone turned to stare at me and I thought I really shouldn't have said that on national television and started to feel very embarrassed. Fortunately, I then woke up so I didn't have to live through the consequences of this misdeed.