Friday was baking day minus 1, so I made up a white sponge using Dove's white, and a rye sponge using HCM rye. Each sponge started off with a spoonful of starter and a couple of spoons of flour, and roughly the same amount of water. Then I fed again a couple of times during the day, making sure that the volume of the sponge at least doubled each time.
It's worth keeping your starter innocent as long as possible, so it has never been anywhere near pesticides. Therefore an organic feeding flour is a good thing. If it has to be compromised on baking day, then at least it's only the loaf that has ever been near pesticides, and the starter has had a good life up to baking day.
I'm not too thrilled with the Dove's flour for baking with - it just seems a bit dull to me compared to Carr's, organic or not. But this is worth noticing -
Milled and sieved. So it is not roller milled, though it doesn't specifically claim to be stoneground. The bag also says produce of more than one country - make of that what you will.
My preference for white flour for baking with is Carr's over Dove's, based on taste and performance; and Dove's for feeding the starter with, as a matter of principle.
This week, what with the shops being stripped of anything bread-related, I was using Aldi's 55p strong white, as per the bread groups.
The Aldi flour certainly made bread which rose well enough, both in sourdough (at the bottom) and in my 50-50 coarse-and-white 24 hour low-yeast loaf (at the top). But the results in terms of flavour and texture were very poor compared to the Carr's.
I started off with 12 mins at 250 fan and then 40 mins at 190 fan. The white sourdough (bottom right) was really doughy, even after 50+ mins in the oven. I don't mean doughy as in underdone, but really chewy and rather claggy to be honest. It reminded me of my Mum's cobs, made with self raising flour, baking powder and too much salt. Heavenly spread with butter (or was it Stork?) hot out of the oven when we were kids, but really pretty desperate considered as bread.
The Aldi texture was not that great either, despite plenty of TLC -
The 50-50 coarse and white loaf looked considerably less like a wholemeal than the corresponding loaf I made last time using using Carr's.
I introduced a desk rest this time - a second shaping before going into the basket. This seemed to help, as all the loaves stood up pretty well. The 50-50 loaves were quite soft, and tending to spread, as Kate also reported when she tried the low-yeast 24 hour rise approach. The desk rest allows the dough to relax after an initial shaping, but then take at least some structure forward to the second shaping on the way into the basket. It still spread on the way into the oven, but leapt quite well, resulting in a reasonably well risen loaf.
But the overriding impression of this bake is that the Aldi flour is significantly below standard, and not to be recommended when we get back to having an alternative. Carr's is definitely worth an extra quid a bag, even if that means it's three times the price.
Did anybody notice the (sliced but uneaten) chollah on the table in this week's "Friday Night Dinner" on ITV? Definitely more than 3 strands. But they only had one loaf, which is not good form!
Today we took our daily piece of exercise on the railway embankment in Arnside. On the new bridge, you can see a nice set of daffs, and with the morning sun behind, you get a self portrait in silhouette to go with them.
And here's an unusual angle on the sand on the river in Arnside -
