Making sourdough bread

Last year, Julia, Kate and I ran a 2 hour workshop on making sourdough bread (as part of the Newport Folk Festival). This year, we did it again.

 

Part of the magic of copresenting this workshop is that the audience get to see how differently we make the bread, despite having the same starting point. 

Some sourdough recipes call for digital scale measuring of every ingredient, others say just do what seems right. Of the three of us, I think I am the least experimental, and the one who can hardly read her scales! But again, that's the magic of sourdough - it just works anyway.

Here Julia is wet-kneading. Not necessary for a normal sourdough loaf, but great fun. Bread made in this way has large holes.

  

Michael and a few others lined up to throw and turn using this wet-knead method. Highly recommended if you've had a tough day and feel like throwing things!

  

Here's one Kate made earlier. We were talking at this stage about oven temperatures and crusts, crunch and chew. 

 

Here's some we all made earlier. 

The proof is in the pudding, so they say, so everyone had to taste all of them.
Of course.

By the way, we did a handout sheet with basic instructions, as tested by the three of us and refined over the last couple of years. If you would like instructions, send me an email, or comment here.