It's Alive!

Ever since I got the River Cottage bread book I have been contemplating making a sourdough loaf. This means creating a sourdough starter, which you use instead of yeast as the raising agent in the bread. It's easily done: you mix flour and tepid water and wait a few days for the natural yeasts in the air to do their job. I've always been put off from doing it though, because you have to 'feed' the starter. It's alive, and if you want to use it, you have to keep it alive. Apparently it's possible to keep a starter on the go for 15 years or more. I've always found that rather daunting. I'll forget to feed it, it'll die, I'll feel bad.

Luckily others do not have such ridiculous worries, and my friend @rougeforever has been inspired by @PlanBreadBakery to make a starter of her own. I'm all in favour of a bandwagon, so yesterday I decided to jump on. I duly mixed 20g of wholemeal bread flour, 20mg of white, 4 raisins (oh alright I used sultanas) and 50ml of tepid water. Plus a bit more water because compared to everyone else's photos it looked like it needed it . I left it on the kitchen counter over night and when I checked it this morning it looked just like a mixture of flour and water. Distinctly inert.

Today I 'fed' the starter with another 40g of flours and some more water and having just checked it....it's bubbling! It's alive!

There may yet be bread (I'll have counselling if it dies. Or a cocktail).

Oat cakes

When I got the River Cottage bread handbook for Christmas I was excited to see a recipe for Scottish oat cakes. I love oat cakes, and what doesn't taste better homemade than shop bought? Home made oat cakes: must be a definite yum yum. In between casting on another hat and ripping it out again and swearing and casting it on again and ripping it out again, I dived into that recipe the moment I had a moment.

I had a false start involving a misunderstanding about oatmeal* (you can't food process porridge oats and use that instead of oatmeal, OK? It's different stuff despite also coming from an oat.) A trip to a health shop later I returned to the recipe armed with proper actual oatmeal (chopped rather than rolled like porridge oats), and set about combining them with equal parts porridge oats, a pinch of salt, 2tbsp of sunflower oil, some just boiled water and a hefty pinch of salt.

Things didn't look too bad as they went into the oven: They held together in the cookie cutter I was using and went into the oven undamaged. Thirty minutes later we were standing over the oven waiting to taste (and waiting to go out for lunch).



I am sorry to report that my oatcakes mainly taste of plain old oat, with perhaps a hint of sunflower oil. A rather noticable and not very pleasant hint. I realise that given the ingredients this should not be a surprise, but somehow I expected them to taste a bit better. They may improve when introduced to some mature cheddar, but I suspect that the oatcake will have to be balanced on the cheese, as they are considerably crumblier than is practical for the other way around.

It is a disapointment: I cannot lie. I suppose I'll have to go and cast on that hat again.

EDIT: We tried them with cheese. Not only did they not taste that good, but they were incredibly hard work to eat. Hours of chewing.

*confusingly, the Americans call what we Brits call 'porridge' 'oatmeal', so if you google it you get a lot of pictures of porridge.