Like allot of folks, I think the pandemic brought us back to basics in many ways. One of the ways it did for me, was to learn the joy of home bread making. This is something my ancestors in Ireland would probably have done on a daily basis to feed the family. It’s really easy, as you only need only four simple ingredient such as flour, salt. water and yeast or a starter.
With the shortage of store bought yeast during the pandemic, I learned to create my own sourdough starter. I called mine Sadie after my beloved dog who passed right at the start of the pandemic. She is a real trooper, like Sadie was in life and has helped me create many wonderful sourdough bakes. As you see in the picture above she doubled in size before this bake. The rubber band shows where she started. Naming your sourdough starter, I learned is an important step, so if you do create one, I would suggest naming it.
For this bake and to broaden my sourdough baking skills, I used the Honey Oat Sourdough recipe from
Sweet and Soft Honey Oat Sourdough
The key thing to remember with making sourdough breads, is that the perpetration time takes considerably longer than using store bought yeast. The proofing time alone in this recipe took 12 hours. I have seen others that can take up to 16 hours. It’s not the bake if you are in a hurry. If you are in a hurry using store bought yeast is the way to go, so you can have bread in 3 to 4 hours.
I started this bake the night before as suggested in the recipe. What I found with this dough is that it was very sticky and wet when you mixed all the ingredients together. This probably has to do with the honey which was added. When you get to the point of shaping the dough on the counter and transferring it to the proofing basket, I would suggest using a bench scraper to help you.
For the second proof it went into the proofing basket.. It does not give a time in the recipe, but I left mine for 90 minutes as it had not doubled in size after 60 for me. As I have mentioned previously proofing times can and do vary a little depending upon the room temperature where you proof. On average I find you you at least need 1 hour otherwise you will run into a under proofing issue.
Overall, I am very happy with this recipe and the way it came. I have shared below some pictures of the final bread. It has a wonderfully chewy texture and is a little sweet as you would expect with the addition of honey. This is a bread, I can’t wait to have in the morning toasted, as I think it will be just scrumptious with some butter. As you see in the pictures, I couldn’t wait and already had a slice with butter. Bread for me is unfortunately one of my downfalls, I just can’t resist it. Let’s see where my bread journey leads me to next.
