experimenting with sour dough

I have had such fun over the last 2 weeks, making my first ever sourdough starter, and then baking with it. I used the recipe in The River Cottage Gluten free Cookbook by Naomi Devlin. I've never made sour dough before, but love the idea of a little bit of the started lives on from one loaf to the next.

first loaf!

First making the starter, I was a little skeptical. Using only riceflour and water. As its wrong time of year, I did not have "organic grapes" to help kick start the good bacteria. I did use too big a bowl, and found a little bit of mould growing on the sides of the bowl where remnants from stirring had been.

First recipe - a mild sour dough loaf. It has a great crust, even "bubbles" and a slightly sour taste. I was concerned when my "dough" was really liquid and didn't seem to do much until final prove, but success!

Encouraged, I decided then on Sunday to make sourdough English breakfast muffins. You do need to start this just before going to bed on Saturday night.

I have 2 sets of crumpet rings. As it turned out, the deeper ones were more successful. An although duck fat was recommended in the recipe, I found the flavour was a little over powering so would use butter next time.

 Getting the batter ready was very quick. Myles loves to see the "science" of cooking and the chemical reaction of lemon juice and bicarb together.

The end result!

 They flip easily. They are a little like crumpets to look at from the top.

There will be more iterations of these to come. And with the starter able to survive in the fridge for 2 weeks between feeds and use, I can see this a regular event.  Yum !