Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Salt-rising bread part 1

So since I've been sick I've been reading a lot of cookbooks. And I found a recipe in the Little House on the Prairie Cookbook for Salt-rising bread, which requires that you start with a sponge/starter thingy. I figured since I'm home and feeling like crud, I'd try adapting it. I also got a couple of tips from Beard on Bread. So I fired up the oven to its lowest temp, 170 (which turns out to be 150) and then turned it off.

I then heated up:

1 cup of milk

added 1 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
4 tbsp cornmeal
and then 1/2 cup of quinoa flour.

dumped all this in a bowl and threw it in the oven with the oven light on, to ferment. Its supposed to ferment for, as far as I can figure, about 16 hours or so. (You are supposed to start it at noon of the day before).

It is foamyish. I'm tempted to put the oven back on preheat for two minutes to warm it back up...but we'll see in the morning.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Edited to add, the oven did not stay warm enough, even with the oven light on. I may try Alton Brown's idea of a heating pad next.

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