I finally ran out of my stores of bread from the first couple weeks of class so I baked some more today. I also did a good deal of experimentation. It's not terribly wise to use several unknowns at once, but whatever.
Unknown 1: I used my sourdough starter for the first time to make some sourdough bread. It seems to have worked just fine. I took it out of the fridge yesterday and reactivated it by feeding it last night and it was good to go. I could definitely taste the sourness in the bread.
Unknown 2: I substituted half whole-wheat flour for bread flour, because I like whole-wheat bread. In some white bread recipes you can do that so I wanted to give it a shot. I think it worked out okay, though I'm not really sure. The loaf rose decently, but it didn't rise a ton, which may be due to the whole-wheat flour. It contains more gluten so makes a denser bread. I would prefer using a full whole-wheat recipe so I might keep experimenting because I like doing the sourdough also.
Unknown 3: The sourdough recipe called for steam injection. In real bread baking settings, some breads have steam injected into the oven at the start. This gives it a crisp crust. In a situation like mine, you can imitate the steam injection by putting a pan of water in the oven about 5 minutes before you put the bread in, and then taking it out about 5 minutes after starting the baking. It seemed to work well. The pan was steaming when I took it out. The bread came out with a very crisp crust as well. Though I didn't really care for the crisp crust. I don't think I'll do it in the future, I'd rather have it soft. That may have also inhibited the rise some during baking.
So the baking part wasn't too bad. But since I'm a total idiot and something always has to go wrong, well, something went wrong. I was keeping my starter on top of my oven since that is kinda warm, due to some radiant heat from my hotplate. However, I left it on there when I baked the bread. It is surprising how ridiculously hot my entire oven, outside included, gets when it is on. To put it simply, I pretty much killed my starter. By the time I realized, almost the entire thing was a baked brick. I discarded everything hardened and was left only a tiny bit of liquid starter left, and even that was pretty hot, like 115F. So I may have completely killed off my starter. It even melted a hole in my tupperware and now I like don't have any storage containers anymore. I fed the starter before class and there was a little bubbling when I got home, so there may be promise. I'll have to see tomorrow.
If it's any solace, at least today showed that I was able to make a successful starter that did it's job. If my attempts at saving mine fails, I know that I'll be able to make a new one if I desire. If that is the case, I'll have to consider my options. While flour isn't expensive, I'm not exactly swimming in cash, so I'll have to consider if i little flavor to my bread is worth it. However, I'll have to look at recipes and see if it really is costing me anything to maintain it-if using the starter cuts down on the required flour in the recipe enough to even it out. Plus if I ever get more serious about bread baking in the future, it'd be cool to have a starter that's been maintained for a few years. Another consideration is making a whole-wheat starter. As I said, I prefer whole wheat bread, so if I'm successful in making a fully whole-wheat sourdough, that would be nice to have a whole-wheat starter as well. If I am able to salvage the starter I have, I may consider converting it to a whole wheat one too. I guess I'll see.
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