Sourdough - Part 2

Success! I babied (stirred, fed, covered, etc.) my starter for three days, as instructed. I found it slightly challenging to feed it as often as Old Sourdough instructed. I fell behind a couple hours here and there, but my starter did not seem to suffer. On Monday, I continued to follow instructions (not always my way of cooking/baking) with precision, and baked my first loaf! It came out pretty good! Simple recipe: 2 c. starter, 2 c. flour, 1 tsp salt. The loaf didn't rise quite as high as I might have liked, but I will see how my future loaves turn out.

I did use all-purpose flour, but I hope to add some whole wheat the next time. The crust was extra crunchy, and the inside warm and chewy. My egg wash was not exactly as beautiful as others' pictures that I looked at, so I'll have to see if I need to paint on more before baking the loaf. I imagine this will continue to be a learning curve. However, my true test was Eli: and he loved it. As mentioned in my previous post, my other loaves of bread with starters had not had the true "sour"dough bread taste, but he said this one did! I enjoyed it as well. We had it for dinner that night with egg salad (thank you, easter eggs), and enjoyed it as toast yesterday and this morning.

The recipe as listed above was Old Sourdough's: I haven't had the chance to do some searching and see what else is out there, but I imagine there are other tried and true ones to experiment with. And if anyone wants to share, my starter seems happy and bubbly, and quite sharable!