Half-baked idea
I'm rolling in dough. Decades spent sniffing around Victoire patisserie, throwing money at Morpeth bakery and endless searches for Dr Allinson's infamous brown loaf, have forced me into trying my hand at the art of sourdough bread making. My mother had a love affair with a loaf of bread. Called Crushed Wheat, it was a frigid brown brick of wholemeal blandness. I endured childhood years of lunchtime envy as my cold beef on brown went head to head against my mates' mouthwatering slabs of butter and vegemite slapped between two soft layers of white bread. It was no match, Tip Top was the one. I've suffered from a rise and fall in emotion that is directly linked to the glutinous threads of clag-like dough stretching between my fingers. It's a sticky situation to be in, for the sense of anticipation an amateur baker feels when the flour turns sour and buns are removed from the oven is palpable. Making sourdough requires the crafting of a pre-ferment...