Raccoon and Lobster

I combined Glutenous Maximus (Max) and Glutenous Minimus (Minnie) into one bowl for a battle royale to save on fridge space. Hopefully the hardiest yeast will survive and maybe the evolutionary drift between Max and Minnie and subsequent reintroduction will also add some good attributes to the yeast. The boyfriend was getting a little irked at the four bowls of starter in the fridge. Now we’re down to zero as I put Glutenous Medius on a feeding cycle to start baking sourdough loaves again. In the mean time I have been baking lots of ciabatta bread – 5 batches since my first batch 6 days ago. That’s 20 loaves of bread. No loaf has lasted longer than 48 hours. Now you see why I’m buying flour in bulk.

I decided to make a hybrid loaf of ciabatta, playing on both Nancy Silverton’s ciabatta recipe and the original Jason’s Quick Coccodrillo recipe I’ve been using.

I just reduced the yeast I use down to 1.75 tsp and added 1 cup (9oz or 250g) or so of sourdough starter. Rise as before and bake. The result was a loaf that didn’t taste sour at all but had a lot more subtle complex flavors and a great crust. I took a few quick pictures to make this post less boring but really, it looks exactly the same as the other loaves. The difference is in the flavor. This was a great way to make a bread I was already baking every day even better and a way to save on sourdough discard. Win-win.