First sourdough loaves

The loaves of bread made on Sunday rose beautifully. The flavor however was not so great. The bread had a sour flavor, but also a bitter aftertaste. I was using rye flour that I had in the freezer and maybe it was rancid. Rye flour will go bad faster than white flour. I have decided to continue to feed the starter for another week with unbleached white flour and see if the bitter taste goes away. If it doesn't improve I may start the culture over with fresher flour. My son Tom and I are the only people in the family who ate the bread. It didn't bother Tom, although he thought it tasted weird. On the other hand, I had some digestive issues that might be related to the starter since I ate some of the bread warm and I know that yeast will stay active in bread for a day.

Mixing and Baking sourdough bread

It is now Sunday afternoon. This morning I removed the flour, water, starter mixture from the basement and set it upstairs in the kitchen to warm up a bit. At 10 a.m. I added 2 tsp. Real Salt, 1/3 Cup melted butter and 1/4 cup of honey to my Bosch Universal mixer and poured the starter mixture in with it. After adding one cup of whole grain, white, winter wheat flour to the bowl, just to create some friction, I turned on the mixer and set the timer for 10 minutes. For the first couple minutes I added additional flour until the dough cleaned the sides of the bowl and then I just let the Bosch do my kneading. After 10 minutes I turned off the machine and left for church not knowing how risen the dough would be when I got home.

Once home I wet my pointer finger and poked the dough. The dough sighed and collapsed a bit. Darn! Over Risen. Don't know now if it will rise properly in my bread pans but I am preheating the oven and the shaped dough is covered with a damp towel and rising in the pans. Only time will tell. Will it even taste good? Smelled pretty bad. I read on one sourdough website called Sourdough Home, that the good bacteria eventually overwhelms the bad bacteria and the starter will improve over time. It also recommended using processed white flour to feed the starter because the yeast in the starter comes in part from the grains themselves. By using dead white flour you are not introducing any new varieties of yeast that might compromise the starter. Not sure I really care at this point because I don't have enough experience to know what is good or bad in a starter.

I am going to bake this bread in the same way that I bake my Honey Wheat bread as far as timing and temperature goes. Keeping my fingers crossed.