I’ve had my sourdough starter sitting on the side in the kitchen for over a week, feeding it regularly, and using some of the discards to make half sourdough, half yeast risen bread.

It still looks like this:

Looking closely enough, you can see bubbles in the mix from the inside of the jar – but it’s nowhere near as lively as this starter picture.

So I was a little uneasy that it wasn’t ready to make a wholly sourdough risen loaf. It’s still pretty cold in the kitchen, and that might account for the low activity in the starter. Still I tried anyway – and left the rising dough sitting on the boiler overnight.

And the dough went from this:

To this:

Which seems to have more or less risen to double the size of the original dough, which was the criteria for continuing. But leaving it on the boiler also ever so slightly cooked it. The dough was crusty on top.

I had been watching these series of videos from FoodWishes – in particular the last one. I was very impressed that the guy there seems to be using the same ingredients as me, but with vastly better technique and better proving got the most enormous loaf out of the same mix.

I used some aspects of his technique before realising I don’t actually have a baking tray that big, so ended up with two smaller batons instead of one giant one. I don’t have a water spray, so did the best I could by chucking a cup of water into the oven before setting off cooking. (I have to say that still sounds like a really bad idea: throwing a cup of water into an electric oven whilst it’s hot?!)

Anyhoo, these are the loaves that resulted.