Jess left home recently and I failed to cancel some of the milk in time. She is a big consumer of full cream milk. I buy the unhomogenised type with the cream on the top. We do also buy semi-skimmed milk, but research a few months back convinced me that full cream milk is healthy and full of goodness, more so than milk with the fat stripped out! She was enjoying it on her porridge and we always had a bit of fun with breaking the cream so that you could actually pour the milk! I discovered a while back that with traditional milk, you can turn the bottle upside down without losing your milk. However, the bottle in the photo above was past its best. I do use the full cream for cooking, and in particular when I am making cheese or white sauce. Today I decided that I really had to do something with the 2 and a bit pints of milk that were about four days past their sell-by date.
I had a funny conversation with Paul. I told him that I was trying to use up some milk, so he suggested rice pudding. I said ‘no that would taste disgusting!’ He was surprised and commented that my cooking is not that bad! I then realised that I had left out the vital information about the milk being out of date! Scones are great made with out of date milk, but I had far too much milk for scones, so I decided to have a go at cheese-making. You can make ricotta or cottage cheese with sour milk (health warning! you don’t want it to be completely rancid! I’d say no more than a week out of date probably).
Colander lined with a jelly bag for straining my cheese
I looked at a couple of recipes and found that the method is really very simple. You just boil the milk, add some lemon juice or vinegar and take it off the heat. You then stir it and it clumps into curds.
Cheesy curds draining
As I had really very little cheese, I decided to add some salt and cream to it to make it into cottage cheese, as this also gave me a bit more bulk to my cheese.
My finished cheese is in the picture below. I had so much whey left afterwards that I have decided to use it in my sourdough bread that I am mixing up at the moment. It won’t be ready until Sunday morning though, ie the day after tomorrow. I found all sorts of other ideas for using whey, including making smoothies, putting into cocktails, as a marinade for meat and even for adding to the dog’s breakfast! As we don’t have a dog, I shall not be trying that out. I am really looking forward to eating my home-made cheese on home-made whey sourdough bread on Sunday!
I have baked my own bread for a long time. I started doing this long before it became fashionable and so talked about. I like home made bread, in fact all home made food. I like to know what is in my food; the number of additives that go into the average loaf that you buy is alarming. For many years I was happy with using dried yeast. It is easy to purchase, works well and we don’t have any allergies in our family. I had experimented with sourdough bread a few years ago, as I like a challenge and the idea of a purer product. However, the results were not good enough to convince me. My loaves were heavy and too stodgy to want to eat on a regular basis.
In the intervening years, I have seen photos of others’ successful sourdough bread and been a little envious. How difficult could it really be? In addition, my brother Matthew visits on a fairly regular basis and we share lunches and dinners. He much prefers sourdough, as it seems to be better for his digestion and well-being. Many people say that sourdough is more easily digested. If I make bread as part of a menu, it would be great to be able to produce sourdough for Matthew.
The situation all came to a head recently when I, like many, found that my yeast supplies were running low.
I started to look up recipes online as well as study my books with sourdough recipes. I also of course consulted my helpful friends in my Archers Chit-Chat group on facebook! I came to the conclusion that I was just not being patient enough and that maybe the first time round I did not get the starter going properly. I have read many times that making a starter should take up to a week, but that it can take longer. One suggestion from Chit-Chat was really helpful, that maybe I could make life easier for myself and try making a starter with a lump of yeasted dough which I could then feed and develop. So in the end I tried two starters, one completely from scratch with just flour and water and the other with a lump of dough that I have added more flour and water to. Okay, you could call this cheating, but actually Doreen Dough has been growing so well that she cannot possibly have any commercial yeast left in her! Dotty Dough, made from scratch, was not as successful; I could have tried again, but decided that life was too short and I had made a working starter, albeit not one for the purists!
I decided to use my trusty friend, BBC Good Food. I am lucky enough to have a gift subscription to this magazine. I also make use of the online recipes if I cannot find quite what I want in my hard copies (I keep them for about 2 years and then throw them away apart from a few treasured ones which have particular recipes in!) After all the advice and links suggested to me, I went for the recipe from Barney Desmazery, with the slight variation that I put a small lump of yeasted dough in with the first measures of flour and water. After that I followed Barney’s instructions to the letter. As I have become more confident, I have known where I can miss out a step or not knead the dough and rest it for exactly the number of times suggested. Here is the link to his recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sourdough-starter The full instructions for turning this starter into a loaf are here: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/white-sourdough
Here are some progress pictures of my starter and dough waiting to be turned into delicious bread:
Making the starter into a loaf… Dough ready to be baked
It is testament to the popularity of sourdough right now that Barney’s recipe consequently turned up in the May issue of the BBC Good Food Magazine. The recipes had been in the magazine last summer and earlier this year.
I had a few disappointing moments with my first few loaves. In fact my first completed loaf was pretty good! I did as suggested in all of the recipes I had seen and baked my loaf in a cast iron casserole dish. The dough is pretty wet and baking it in the dish seemed to help. However, it did take a long time to cook. The second time I baked a loaf, it was a complete disaster and I ended up turning it into breadcrumbs. It was heavy and quite unpalatable. I am convinced that the dish was to blame! See the picture of my unsuccessful loaf below:
Stodgy, inedible sourdough loaf!
Despite having had success with the casserole dish method, I was not prepared to risk another disaster, particularly as I was now having trouble getting regular supplies of flour. I then had the great idea of trying to source flour from a traditional mill, and I have bought quite a few bags from this place on the Isle of Wight: https://www.calbournewatermill.co.uk/product-category/isle-of-wight-flours/ Anyway, to go back to my baking disaster, I took the plunge and just baked the next loaves on a baking sheet, free-form as I usually do with my yeasted loaves. Although the dough was really wet, it rose to the challenge and my bread was a success. The picture at the top of this blog piece was one of the loaves I made by this method.
I did consider buying a proving/kneading gadget from Lakeland, my favourite kitchen shop, but decided in the end to save the expense. The idea of this silicone bread maker is that you can bake an oval or round loaf in it. I was advised though that it only makes a very small loaf. I have also in the past given up on proving baskets. I bought one of these a few years ago as I liked the idea of making loaves with those very professional looking spirals on the top. However, despite using plenty of flour, my basket just kept sticking! So my equipment is really very basic. I use a very big mixing bowl, as I generally make two loaves at the same time; we do seem to be eating more bread in lockdown! If the situation changes, I can reduce the quantities or put a loaf in the freezer. I also knead the dough on my granite board. This board is not designed for the purpose at all, and in fact was purchased for chocolate making, which Jess and I both do on occasions. The reason I use the board is that sourdough making involves kneading and folding for a few minutes, then leaving the dough to rest. I do follow the advice and do this 3 times before putting the dough back into the bowl and proving it in the fridge for 18 hours. I just find it more convenient to not have my complete worktop sticky with bread dough. With the board, it is nice and portable should I need to move the resting dough and get on with some other cooking.
I had a few e-mail discussions with my brother Matthew to see how he was getting on with his sourdough experiments. He found that using a proving basket worked for him, and I believe he also bakes the loaf in a casserole dish as suggested.
I am now so happy and confident with my bread making. I usually add some spelt, rye or granary flour to my dough and I sometimes make sourdough pizza. I can also offer a loaf to my mother, as she enjoys my home-made bread. I am happy to say that Jess is now more prepared to eat home-made bread. It is probably partly to do with being kind and considerate during lockdown, and making limited visits to the shops, but she did used to insist on having a loaf from the supermarket for her sandwiches – she now happily eats the bread I make and I like to think that this is because it tastes so good!
Here is a picture, hot off the press, of today’s loaves. I shall be making some sandwiches for lunch. Oh, one further word of advice. Do try to resist the temptation to cut your loaf too soon. Hot bread squishes and goes rather doughy if you cut it too soon. It is best to wait at least a couple of hours before eating it! After a couple of days, sourdough bread is perfect for toast.
