I was at an
SCA event a few weekends back, and after a lovely conversation with
a very passionate breadsmith, I was gifted some dried sourdough starter, a version that he called "Illinois Sweet."
I've tried once before to get a wild starter going, but it was a pretty dismal failure (and possibly a source of some spectacular biotoxins). This time, I carefully woke up the starter and fed it daily. I followed the directions to the letter, and after about four days I had an overflowing little bowl of bubbly, sticky, yeasty starter... wicktory!
So I decided to try some bread with my little bowl of starter. I dug through my copies of
Uprisings (from my Blue Mango baking days) and a few other cookbooks on our shelves before I settled down with
the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion Cookbook (a gift from the luminous
cheesepuppet, thank you SO MUCH!).
I decided to go with a part-whole-wheat Pain au Levain, a very basic flour-starter-water-salt hearth bread. I added some toasted pecans right at the end of the mixing, with fond memories of the Sacramento Baking Company's sour wheat walnut bread.
When I proofed the bread, I made a guess as to the best vessel to use... and I guessed wrong. I had decided to go with a single large loaf instead of two smaller boules, and used
the largest glass mixing bowl I own (my mom's old Pyrex bowl), lined with a cotton kitchen towel (fabric, not terrycloth). The shape was too rounded, and this much dough really needed something wider. Also, when I slashed the top, only one slash was deep enough to do any good, so it only spread out along the one axis when it baked... which meant it looked like it was mooning me!
I used the wooden peel sprinkled with semolina and the preheated baking stone to bake it, and that turned out very well. I used a cast-iron pan with water to create a humid oven, but I didn't have a spray bottle handle to spray the surface of the boule before I put it in the oven... I sprinkled it with water from my hands, but I suspect not enough.
Since it was so thick in the middle, there was a bit in the center that was still uncooked while the outer crust was very brown and hard. But the stuff that WAS done was really delicious. It's a lot sweeter than I imagined it would be, even though I knew that the Illinois sourdoughs are never going to be as tangy as the San Francisco versions. Still, it's a young starter and I'm new at this... I suspect I'll be able to get it a little more sour with some age and experience.

I transferred my starter to a larger bowl... I had to use almost the entire bowl of starter for this loaf, so I clearly needed a larger amount to work with. I've been feeding it up, and it's been warmer all this week, so I'll try again this weekend and see what happens. I also went to the thrift store and got a nice wide wicker basket for proofing, and I'll see if I can get a cheap spray bottle too.
I'm also looking forward to some sourdough waffles in the near future!
Anyway, I wanted to document this journey into the land of sourdough... has anyone else out there had a successful experience with starters and sourdoughs? I'd love to hear about it!