Late to the sourdough craze

It's almost 20 years since I first started my booking apprenticeship, and it's 18 months since COVID hit and I have only just baked my first load of sourdough bread! Crazy right!

I've been baking bread for years, but just your run of the mill block loaf, some bread rolls and my favourite cheese & bacon rolls, but never sourdough. I'm not sure why but I put it in to the too high maintenance basket - and it is, but well worth it.

Being a bit lazy I purchased a starter and have been feeding it for the past few weeks. I then found a recipe that seemed fairly easy (the one that came with my started seemed to need many hours over several days) from Alexandra's Kitchen and off I went.

Working from home has it's advantages as I was able to start this on a Friday so I could bake Saturday and we had nice bread for Sunday breakfast (poached eggs, smoked salmon and spinach for me).

Overall it wasn't as high maintenance as I thought and I was really happy with the result - especially for my first attempt. I think having a combo-oven (more on that later) helps as you can control the humidity, and get your baking steel super hot.