Check out my sourdough!!

Ok, so in case you couldn't tell I am way super proud of my sourdough bread that I made. I made the starter on Friday and let it sit out on my counter top all weekend til Sunday when I made the bread. I got my bread recipe from recipezaar and its for just a basic sourdough recipe, but they have a ton of different sourdough recipes on there to choose from. I doubled my batch to make 2 loaves so I could give one away to my toast burning brother, remember him?






The recipe calls for bread flour, which at first confused me. I didn't have any and I wasn't sure if I could substitute regular all purpose flour for it instead. I learned that it was best to use the bread flour because it helps the bread rise more because of the higher protein level in the flour. I went to Sam's Club and bought a 25lb bag of bread flour for like $5.25. I figured I would be making a lot of bread in the future, or at least that's what I told my husband when he asked why in the world I needed 25lbs of flour. But being the good husband that he is, he let me buy it. So, I went home and began to bake some bread. The dough was pretty easy to put together and here it is after I was done kneading it and got it in the bread pans.

It said to let the dough rise from 1 1/2 hours up to 3 hours. I let mine sit on my stove top covered with a kitchen towel and I would say it took about 2 hours for mine to rise. Here it is all risen and ready to go into the oven.

The recipe says to bake it at 375 degrees for 10 minutes and then to drop the temp down to 350 and bake another 30-40 minutes. I baked mine for the 10 minutes and then an additional 30minutes at the lower temp. The bread came out awesome and it has been a big hit so far! I have heard that making sourdough bread can be tricky, but for my first time making it, I think it was quite easy and the bread came out great! I will definitely be making this one again!! Here is the finished product!