Sourdough - First Attempts

A week or so ago a friend gave me a sourdough starter which apparently originated in Ireland and is of an ancient heritage. Well I kept it in my fridge as directed while I frantically googled for what to do with it. My friend had been a little vague, as it is his wife who is the baker in the family and she was in Spain at the time.

I found Sourdough Home fairly quickly which gave me a wealth of information about how to care for my sourdough starter, and a recipe (which I haven't tried yet). Then I found this recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Being quite a fan of Hugh I decided to give his recipe a go.

First of all it did involve quite a bit of leaving the dough to rise but he was very reassuring that it really didn't matter if you left it longer than the period stated. This was quite handy as it meant that I could get on with doing other things rather than feeling that I had to hang around at home waiting for my bread to do it's thing. 

The bread itself, when we finally got around to eating it, was absolutely delicious. It had exactly the kind of sweet nutty flavour I expected. However the first loaf we made flattened when we turned it our of our improvised proving basket. Mrs Uncruliar thought that that the dough had been too wet so for our second loaf we added more flour. Sadly we had exactly the same experience. Actually it seemed to me that the dough flopped onto the baking sheet so violently that it knocked most of the air out of it. For our next attempt I am planning on letting the bread prove on the baking sheet to see if that helps.

Marrow Chutney

A couple of weeks ago we were given several marrows so we decided to make some marrow chutney. We started with this recipe from Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall which calls for 1 1/2 lbs of marrow but I had 4 1/2 lbs to use so I started to triple up all the ingredients. I had plenty of onions which I had gleaned from a harvested field nearby but I had to buy some apples and tomatoes so I ended up using a little less than the recipe called for.

As the picture shows it was a tight squeeze in the preserving pan. I kept the heat as low as I could and the lid on until eventually the vegetables started to mush down. The recipe said to bring to the boil and then simmer for an hour. With triple the ingredients it took a lot longer to reduce enough to bottle but eventually I ended up with just over 12 jars.

• Spice bag - 1 1/2 teaspoon each of cloves, black peppercorns and coriander seeds
• 4 1/2 lbs courgettes and marrow or pumpkin, peeled and diced into 1cm pieces
• 4 lbs over-ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped 
• 4 lbs bruised or shrivelled apples  
• 1 1/2 lbs onions, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1l white wine or cider vinegar
• 600ml water
• 3 teaspoons dried chilli flakes
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 1/2 lbs dried fruits/raisins
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 lbs light brown sugar

The part jar tasted very good. The rest has gone into the pantry to mature for three months as per the recipe instructions.