Learning technologist, walker, climber, musician, morris dancer, general geek.
I use this as somewhere to post random things that don't really fit on my 'real' blog at http://erambler.co.uk/
Representatives of Dan Lepard have asked me to remove this recipe for flaky butter buns.
I think I may have overfed Larry a bit last night. I came home this evening to find him trying to escape from the jar!
Having cleaned him up and fed him, I've moved him to the kitchen windowsill, which is colder. Hopefully this will help him to calm down a bit!
Since I'm going to be feeding this thing and keeping it alive, I'd better give it a name. From now on (at Elly's suggestion), his name is Larry the Leaven.
Anyway, I fed and watered Larry daily over the weekend, and he's looking quite healthy now. A gently sweet, yeasty aroma has arrived today, along with the beginnings of nice sourness. Hopefully he'll make me some nice bread this coming weekend.
Day 3: 100g water, 4 rounded tsp each of rye flour and white flour — discard three quarters, mix in the water, then strain out the raisins with a tea strainer before returning to the jar and stirring in the flour;
Day 4, 5 and onward: feed on a daily diet of 100g water and 125g strong white flour, after discarding three quarters — if you use some for baking, just replace that with the water and flour.
I'm keeping him as close to 20°C as I can manage all the time — according to my thermometer the room temperature varies between about 14 and 18°C.
Well, I think it turned out ok, really. It's very rich, but not as sweet as I expected — the flavour is very similar to croissants, which is unsurprising as they both use basically the same ingredients.
Like all inexperienced bakers, I worried a lot about the dough being too sticky and probably added a little bit too much flour while kneading. The solution to that is to use a decent scraper. I also think I probably worked it too much after adding the butter and shortened the gluten a bit, as it's gone a bit cakey in spite of using strong bread flour.
Not sure if I'll try it again any time soon, or try a bunch of other things first.
