Low-Risk Sourdough Bread

Saturday, April 22, 2006

There are four recipes in The Bread Bible that scare me: sourdough (because you have to make a starter that could be rife with bacteria), bagels (because you boil them, and who boils bread?), baguette (because there's no way to disguise a bad baguette), and croissants (because they're just scary).
And there are about six different sourdough recipes. Sourdough presents an ethical dilemma. I can buy sourdough starter on line at www.sourdo.com and I'd love to do that. But I'm afraid that if I don't make my own starter, I will get an asterisk, like Barry Bonds, after my record of making all 82 loaves of bread, indicating that I cheated by not making my own sourdough starter but buying it through the internet. I told a friend my dilemma, and she pointed out that I didn't mill my own flour, and that didn't seem to bother me. That cheered me up some, but I was still relieved to see that Rose has two sourdough recipes that call for a starter from The Bakers Catalogue. Now I can make these two breads before I have to make a final decision on my dilemma.
In fact, this bread was very low-risk, and very delicious. If I could buy this loaf of bread, I would.
By the way, I used my new French slashing knife, and it worked much better than my old knife.