Win some and lose some. Last night I took “Boris” out of the fridge and combined the sponge for making sour dough bread this morning. The best use for these sour dough bread loaves would be as bludgeons for a murdering spree! I don’t have a clue what happened…starter (AKA Boris) losing his super power??? I just don’t know what went wrong so all 3 loaves hit the trash bin. What all was right? Nothing… weighed a ton, hard as a rock, still doughy crumb after an hour in the oven, less sour taste than previous loaf. I could not find one redeeming quality. I hate to fail!!!! Not in my wheelhouse so I’ll try again another day.
Moving on to what I thought might be successful, I turned my attention to making bagels for the first time in my life. The recipe I followed came from my Bread Alone book by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik. I followed the recipe exactly except for one small deviation (maybe this is where I always shoot myself in the foot!!) and added a scant cup of my multigrain cereal mix to make them have a multigrain quality. Everything seemed to go well but the end result was neither super great nor abysmal. They had a great taste, nice crumb and looked OK but my personal preference is for the bagel to be a little larger than what these were. I didn’t get the oven spring I wanted (cereal multigrain mix???), but the overall result wasn’t horrible. On the plus side, smaller equals fewer calories, they weren’t dense and chewy as most bagels are and they had a chewy texture and pleasant taste.
Each baking adventure is a learning process and I am gaining in knowledge with each failure and success. Most importantly, I am having fun in the process so I will keep….
Baking and bageling on!!!!
ginnybirdbeakspeak 