Balmoral Park Farm Kitchen has really come into being because of the bread and my desire to achieve perfection in baking sourdough bread. I have filed in my memory bank a quote from someone I admired, I cant remember who it was!! who said they were going to devote their retirement to baking the perfect loaf of bread. I thought this was a pretty worthy goal and that I would emulate it!
It quite quickly became apparent that in the pursuit of sourdough perfection we were going to end up with a lot of bread! Far too much bread for two people to eat. Added to that I found some beautiful local, stoneground flour https://www.facebook.com/artisangrainsau/ and while it is a very reasonable price it adds considerably to the cost of my experimentation.
So I thought I would explore the possibility of selling some of the bread. Now I live in a fairly isolated, small, rural community, you can count the number of cars that go down our road each day on your fingers! Having just left a working life where I spent many hours every week in my car I am not prepared to deliver, so I was not sure if there were enough people in our community who would drive out here to pick up bread. It seems there are and we are in business. I get to bake many more loaves of bread each week and I can see the improvements all the time. I also have the opportunity to try new recipes and ideas. My bibles are Sarah Owens Sourdough books and Artisan Sourdough Made Simple by Emilie Raffa. I love trying new ideas. Today I am baking a Brooklyn Loaf from Sarah Owens Sourdough. The ingredients dont change much but small changes in method make huge differences. My kitchen scales are invaluable in this process.
 |
Finished Loaves
|
 |
Starter
|
 |
Proofing Dough
|
 |
The flour
|
 |
Shaped and Scored
|
Comments