Honey Oat Sourdough

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I want to be a bread geek.

I want to know everything there is to know about yeasts, and flours. The whole process fascinates me. Every time I pull a loaf out of the oven I am amazed at what I have before me. Particularly the wonderful beast that is sourdough. Every loaf is different, each one with it’s own little personality. I want to play with so many different ingredients, then pull it all together into a simple loaf.

Will I ever get to be a bread geek?…I don’t know. My small to medium sized brain seems to struggle with the why’s, how’s and when’s, but I’m slowly getting better. I know I’m geekier than 8 months ago, when I first started on making my own sourdoughs. I also know there is a lot more to learn. I guess that’s all right though…

Bread is a fairly forgiving staple, my family all enjoy the experimenting and I get to muse on the next concoction of dough that I will play with. Wondering on the how, where and when of the loaf coming together, and  loving every part of it.

Pepper the conversation with hydration levels, protein percentages, lames, banettons, biga, poolish, wild yeast, epis and my interest will immediate be sparked. All words that less than a year ago I would have smiled politely and wondered what language you were speaking, as I hadn’t the foggiest idea what you were talking about.

I can put Mr Chocolate to sleep with my constant mutterings and musings when trying to nut out the next bready dilemma I’m having. Lying in bed I’m trying to juggle flour ratios and proving times, while he quietly says the occasional uhuh…and heads out to sleep land. I only realise he has stopped doing his job (being the sounding board that I like him to be), when my question of what do you think? Is greeted with eyes closed, soft nose whistles and the odd body twitch.

Leaving me to my own bready geek talk.

Honey Oat Sourdough

200gms starter

1 1/2 cups strong bakers flour (225gms)

1 cup whole rolled oats (I soaked these in 1/2 cup hot water first)

150mls water (approx)

2 heaped tbls honey

1 tps salt

Mix, prove, fold, prove, shape, long slow overnight ferment in the fridge, bring it back to room temperature. Slash. Bake at 250C with steam.

 

This post is submitted to the wonderful yeastspotting.

 

37 thoughts on “Honey Oat Sourdough”

  2. This sounds too delicious. I might have to go to the shop and buy some bread. We have the best bread shop in Lucca, where I am heading today. It is in a tiny little street and people queue out the door for their supplies.

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    • Debra I’ll swap you 🙂 I wonder if your bakery in Lucca would take a free Aussie apprentice for a week… oh, that would really help with my bread geekiness! Will you post about it for me?… Pretty please?

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  3. Brydie, that photo is out of this world! I think I’ve passed into and out of bread geekiness – I now just have a few tried and tested recipes that I make almost instinctively. But when I look at photos like this, I feel like I’ve been lazy, and maybe I should go back to trying new and exciting things! 🙂

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    • Thanks Celia! I don’t know if I will be able to sustain the geek within, but am I loving it while I am. Epi wreaths for dinner and Blueberry Rye’s for breakfast…pilates also has commenced…everything unfortunately has an equal and opposite reaction.

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  4. Hey Brydie, give yourself some credit mate. I already think you are a bread geek. I feel like I have only touched the surface in our bread-making endeavours. Mind you, Kim does make a mean bread roll.

    Gav x

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  5. Note to Anna: Do NOT open Brydie’s bread blogs when your hungry…… all sorts of horrible hunger pangs are going on here. Nice one….. verrrrrry nice one Brydie 😉
    PS: Don’t you just love it when your fella tries ever so hard to concentrate on your rants when their eye lids are drooping…., ahhh, gotta luv ’em huh 😉

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  6. I hereby dub thee Sir Brydie Breadgeek, arise and go thee to the scullery and prepare one hot soaker more… hydrate thy dough made with fair flours and good honey….

    8 months and you are soaring away with your breads – so beautiful!

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    • Coming from her Ladyship Breadgeek herself, I take that title with pride and deeply bow to you…
      There is a page in one of Jamie Oliver’s books about him joining the “Bread Brotherhood’ in France. That sounds very appealing.

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      • Heehee! I am a mere attendant at the Court of Geek, I just ‘borrowed’ someone’s robes temporarily for that little ceremony – ref the Fool in King Lear… no secret societies for me – I agree wholeheartedly with Heidi, the language forms a barrier to understanding and makes it seem a whole lot more obscure than it is. You can’t expect to make great bread from the word go, like most skills and it is a skill, but it’s mostly practice and a little thought that gradually gets your bread better. Either that, or you just get used to how your own bread tastes and become almost incapable of eating anything else…. Or maybe I’m so geeky I don’t recognise it anymore..that’s always a possibility 😉

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  7. WOW! You sound pretty geeky to me already. I’m impressed. I would love to try making sourdough but it sounds really time consuming to get started. That loaf you made looks gorgeous and I am imagining the aroma wafted right through your house.

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  8. There would be no fun in knowing it all instantaniously – all the excitement of so much to learn. Your bread looks and sounds perfect and I’m quite envious ofhow much you’ve learnt over the past few months – a bread geek indeed 🙂

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  9. I think of bread making as an adventure. There are always new loaves to conquer !!!
    I’m not a very good geek, in that I know the language, some, but I try to beguile the innocent and so I speak in slow English and invite them into my world with words bewitchingly enticing rather than geeky.
    Your bread is beautiful- your photography skills dwarf mine.
    Keep up the Geek Quest- as long as you keep producing the bread!

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    • Thanks Heidi. After forgetting to put a tray of dough into the fridge last weekend when it was about 30C in my kitchen overnight, that dough certainly was in for an adventure. In an extra warm position to boot! Quite *ahem* sour 🙂

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  10. Did you know that Les at Crystal Waters Sourdough Bakery is holding bread making weekends? Spend the weekend at Crystal Waters Permaculture Village and learn from the experts – I can send you the details if you like. Sonya

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  13. Looks and sounds -you are a skilled writer- like a winner – I don’t think I’ve ever done an ‘oat’ sourdough – but I’ll try to carry your inspiration to my next baking session.

    Nice post!

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  14. it’s looks scrumptious! Do you want to come and stay with us? We do make bread every day but we don’t have wonderful varieties of flour here in DR. My husband has a sourdough starter that he kept for months but then we went traveling and didn’t have a dough sitter.

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    • Um yes! I could shake the city out of all of us. I’ve added the Dominican Republic to my places to visit in the world because of your beautiful blog.
      That’s too bad about the starter. Will he start another one?

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    • Get your oven fixed and then give it a go and I’m sure you won’t look back! I took 3 weeks to make my own starter, it was easy enough, and interesting to see the whole progress from the start. I did mine in winter with more stable temperatures I’m not sure I would have been as successful if I had done it in the summer.
      There are a LOT of different methods for starting on the internet, but in a nut shell. You want to start with equal parts flour to water, (50gms flour: 50mls water) mixed up to a paste and leave it for 24 hours. At the same time the next day you feed it again. your starter is weighing 100gms, so you need to feed it 100gms, then it will be weighing 200gms, (100gms flour: 100mls water) third day the same again, up in increments. Today it is probably starting to bubble and getting a fermenting type smell. If you kept going at those ratios it would get too big, so the best thing to do is to discard some and bring it back to 100gms. Feeding continues…It’s a hungry beast that will always be needy!
      Depends on who you talk to, your starter can be ready in 1-4 weeks. I went with 3 weeks, but I did use it beforehand and added a little commercial yeast to bump it up.
      Clear as mud?… Let me know if you do decide to go ahead with it and I can hopefully give some clearer instructions 🙂

      Alternatively find someone that already makes sourdough and they can give you some starter to get going with.

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  17. I think it’s beneficial to have an outlet where you can explore ideas and try new things… I seem to flit between different ‘outlets’ and never stay on the same thing for too long..it’s always such fun to delve into something new and explore it as much as possible. You look like you are having so much fun with your breadmaking, I can’t believe you only started down the sourdough path last year! Keep on nurturing your inner geekiness Brydie, it is obviously agreeing with you 🙂 xx

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  18. Pingback: RECIPES « Cityhippyfarmgirl

  19. That is a mighty fine looking loaf of sourdough there, you appear to be doing really well at the whole baking thing. I am a baker’s daughter and am trying to make more of my own bread.

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    • Thanks Ines. I’m having a lot of fun with all the sourdoughs at the moment. There are so many different types of bread to be made and not enough time nor sizeable pants to do it 🙂
      …and a bakers daughter? Lucky thing.

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