Sourdough-baby

I promise you, you'd be posting pictures of your sourdough too if you knew how long it took to fully activate my San Francisco sourdough culture before I could make bread. He's been in the fridge for over 6 months so he was in deep sleep when I took him out. I had to force feed him every 12 hours and even then he wouldn't come back to life. It was at the end of the 2nd week of continually feeding him and I was about at the end my sourdough rope, when he perked up and ate all his flour. He puffed up like a good culture. Finally. So then I went through the bread process and came out with this loaf of bread pictured. It is a badge of honor for me... I really had to work for it. I guess that's what I get when I abandon my cultures in the fridge for months at a time. I was traveling so much between June and September that I just didn't have a lot of extra time to make sourdough bread. So my culture suffered silently in the fridge determined to torture me before he became fully active again.

Did you know? In the beginning, all risen breads were sourdough, or naturally leavened, breads. As my sourdough mentor Dr. Ed Wood (Sourdough International http://www.sourdo.com/) sums it up: "For over 5,000 years, from man's first bread in Egypt to about 100 years ago, all bread was leavened with wild yeast. In addition to the many wild yeast strains in sourdough cultures, lactic acid bacteria generate 45 flavor producing ingredients. Breads baked with commercial yeast can never equal the flavor and texture of sourdoughs. 10,000 years later, and there's no better way to raise bread!"

I have the SanFrancisco culture and the Bahrain culture. "Bahrain is thought by many to be the ancient Garden of Eden. The Bahrain sourdough is from the oldest of the old. It rises well and is one of the most sour." Since I have a very sour-addicted husband (knicknamed SourBaby) this is the culture for him. This bread gives new meaning to the word sour. When I was on a kick last year of making the Bahrain bread (and leaving SanFran in the fridge to sulk), after I ate regular bread again I kept thinking that the bread had no flavor. You know, something to come up and bite you on the butt like a sourdough does. I gave Sourdough bread some to my Senegalese friends (who love bread) and they were very polite about it but I think it's clear that they weren't quite into the sourdough experience. I didn't know how to explain it but made a mental note not to do that again!

Today I'm making Brook's favorite: a cinnamon and nut raisin sourdough bread. He's doing his final rise in his pan (not Brook, the dough) before I bake him. Can you believe I used over 1/4 cup of cinnamon? That's a lot of cinnamon. But it seems to work. Actually I think I still have some crusty dough bits on the back of my hand so I had better go and get that off.... but I'll call you when the bread is out of the oven... you can have some with us.