Fresh tomato soup with sourdough bread

The other day Meghan announced that she makes sourdough bread and that she had a 4 year old culture. As non of us have ever made this type of bread, she very kindly volunteered to share the culture with us and show us how to bake the bread.

Feeding the starter

Ingredients:
200 gr strong flour
50 gr wholemeal flour
50 gr sourdough starter
200 gr water

1. Measure flours and sourdough starter into a non reactive bowl together
2. After heating water, add to bowl and gently mix with hand. Flour  and starter should be indistinguishable, but does not have to be perfectly mixed
3. Cover the bowl with tea towel and sit on the counter overnight or all day.
Pour into a non reactive container (plastic sealed bag, glass container, etc) and store in the fridge
4. Try to feed at least every 3 weeks or a day before a planned bake

Smelling the yeast starter. Lovely and sweet

Meghan explaining the process

Meghan overseeing Angeles' kneading

Looking at the tomatoes that I pick a few weeks ago but were still only just turning then,  they are now nice and ripe, ready for soup.

We made  this with Garden Fresh Tomato Soup

and Low Fat No tahini  humus using yoghurt

and the carrot top and hazelnut pesto

Hi Karina

Allow the starter that is currently on your counter to incubate until this evening. I would put it in the fridge overnight, since you fed it early in the day today.

The starter looks great! If you want to do a quicker bread just shorten all the times and add about 2g of instant yeast to the dough when you do the salt. This will quicken the rise and you won’t have to do it overnight.

Then follow Hugh's recipe

I would time it this way:

- do a second feed this morning (50g starter, 200g white, 50g wholemeal and 200g warm water); store a portion of yesterday’s starter in the fridge in bag or container now. It will be happy for 3 weeks

- start the dough around 1 pm, and as you have added the 2 g instant yeast as it will rise quickly. 

- I would do one rise in the mixing bowl until almost doubled, and a second rise shaped into the bannetons.

- bread should be ready by 6pm to bake! 

overnight in the fridge

The end result