My Balloon Is So Deflated...

Last Christmas (or was it Father's Day?) I bought Jeff a sourdough making kit. It came with a little packet of dried sourdough starter flakes, and all sorts of things to make me feel official like a wooden stir & proofing cloths.

I finally set out to make our starter this weekend. Temperatures need to be warm in the house (above 70 degrees) consistently to get your starter vigorous, so it finally warmed up and I was set to go.

The starter looked beautiful & bubbly & smelled amazingly sour. On Monday, I was ready to start a "Two Night Super-Sour" loaf recipe. Yeahhhhh. Right.

This recipe involved many, many steps with lots of adding flour, water, other stuff, & waiting.

So what happens to my Two Night Super Sour on the second night...the night when it's supposed to proof (rise) to about double size? Not a dang thing. My bread didn't rise AT ALL.

So Jeff suggested turning it into duck bread and just go ahead and bake it anyway. So I'll be baking my bricks in a bit so Reese can feed the ducks some gourmet bread.

The Good: With a starter, you always save some of it so you can feed it (simply adding flour & water), get it active again (sit it on the counter until it's bubbly & smelly), and make more bread with it. Starters last for years and years if fed regularly. So we didn't lose Jeff's sourdough starter gift. I just have to start over again.

I think my error was in not letting the starter get vigorous enough. I've got it on the counter again, it's doing it's thing, and I'm going to attempt another loaf on Friday. Hopefully it will work this time.

What a big bummer for our first attempt!!