So…Yeah, I didn’t really do well with the whole doing everything local. Not at all, really. I’ve discovered that I just don’t know enough about vegetables to make a great go of it. I’m still trying, and still doing some, just not as much as I would like. I am, however, spending more time learning to cook better and experiencing new foods. To that end, I joined the Daring Kitchen with a couple of my friends. December was my first month, and let me tell you, it was a failure. I’m not sure if it was me, or us, or the project, but it just didn’t work. First off, the obligatory check lines:
Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!
I was super excited about this one because I LOVE BREAD and I love baking bread! And sourdough is my favorite. There were three types in this challenge and because of my love of bread, I started all three starters.
And all three failed. Horribly. Two were too runny and never got into a dough consistency and all three were covered in mold by day 3 and a half. I spent some time learning about sourdough and tried modifying just the rye starter following some best practices not mentioned in the recipe. The first few days were great! The starter was growing like is was supposed to and smelled just like I expected!
However, by day 4, the starter was dead.
I got together with one of my fellow daring bakers, and alas her starter failed as well. On the boards, I saw lots of people with success, but it seems like most of them had starters already and weren’t using the recipe for the new starters. Sigh.
At this point, I don’t know if it was the recipe or if it is the climate here in Houston this year.
Fear not! I plan on ordering a starter from someone and trying this one again on my own. I also look forward to the new challenge starting on January 1 and I am sure the next one will be a success.
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