I baked my first (successful) loaf of sourdough bread in the middle of January 2024. It had taken me more than two months to get a viable starter working. My initial attempts at baking sourdough bread were dismal. I’m a bit surprised that I didn’t give up. I’m glad I didn’t.
Once I knew that I could produce an edible loaf, my project was to improve upon it. And then to branch out. That first loaf was a 100% white bread flour boule. By February, I moved to a boule of 50% white bread flour, 40% wholewheat flour, and 10% rye flour. That is my current standard loaf. It has 75% hydration. And it looks like this:
By the end of February I had added ciabatta bread to my repertoire. This was a 100% white bread flour dough with 80% hydration. I liked the ciabatta buns I was making. But in late September I had a game changer: my first olive ciabatta loaf. Really nice.
During the year I also experimented with sourdough pita bread, sourdough pizza dough, and sourdough focaccia.
The biggest challenge though was the baguette. My early efforts were unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. Baguette dough has to be handled a fair bit prior to going in the oven. It requires patience and solid technique. My first attempts probably had too high of a hydration for my skill level. Once I reduced the hydration to 70%, I was able to achieve something like what I was aiming for. I also had to learn that for my oven, demi-baguettes are the better size. I’m still not 100% satisfied with them. It’s an ongoing project.
It has been a very rewarding year. Apart from enjoying lots of sourdough bread, I’ve been able to give some nice loaves to friends and family. And since we didn’t purchase any store-bought bread over the entire year, I can say with some degree of certainty that we saved a fair bit of money. I made a point of tracking the costs of all my ingredients during 2024. The total cost of all ingredients comes to just over $340. With those ingredients, I made:
- 86 boules
- 6 baguettes
- 84 demi-baguettes
- 52 ciabatta buns
- 3 ciabatta loaves
- 21 olive ciabatta loaves
- 1 focaccia
- 8 pizzas
I’m taking a break over the holidays since I am travelling. I will be back in 2025 with lots more sourdough. I’ve got a list of things to try in order to improve the bread I’m currently making, and some ideas about how to broaden my repertoire further. Looking forward to it!
I’m hungry!!!
Amazing that so much tasty bread can come from $340 of ingredients.
How do you know the hydration level? Is there more to it than measuring how much water gets added to the dough before baking?
The hydration is the amount of water divided the total amount of the flour. For example, if the total amount of flour in the dough is 1000g and the amount of water is 700g, then the hydration of the dough is 70%.