Boring old white bread

You sick of hearing about my bread yet? Well I wasn't tired of baking it. It was Sunday and I had one tiny little loaf left from the previous day. I need more bread. I had taken a piece of dough from the last bread and cultivated it in pretty much the same way I had my last batch of starter. Sunday morning when I opened it up to use it, gone was that nice full yeasty beerlike smell I usually get from my starter, and in its place was the smell of sour milk. Is that how sourdough starter is supposed to smell? I didn't think so, so down the drain it went. I was going to have to make a strait up bread dough, no starter. As a side note I need to follow the directions in the sourdough article I linked to and actually cultivate a real sourdough starter so I know what it is supposed to be like, maybe it is supposed to smell like sour milk. What do I know?!!

I based this dough on yesterdays dough, the ingredients were:

1 cup water

3 cups bread flour (need the extra gluten from a bread flour since there is no starter)

1 1/2 tsp yeast

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp sugar

1tbsp olive oil

I mixed it up in the kitchen aid, it was really crumbly so I let it sit 10 minutes for the flour to absorb the water and then turned on the KA. Still crumbly, so I added 3 tbsp of water, one at a time until the dough came together. I left it mixing about 5 minutes then transferred it to a bowl to rise. Today is Sunday, you know what Sunday is? The kids say "church day" and they're right, but it's also SOCCER DAY!!! I'm getting pretty sick of soccer! While I was at the soccer field from 11:30 to 3:30 (I must admit it was a gorgeous day to be outside!) my bread was rising. We had a Birthday party to go to after soccer so while the kids changed their clothes I put the dough back into the KA with the dough hook and let it ride for 5 minutes before plopping it back in the bowl and covering it. Back from the party (2 and a half hours had passed) I punched down the dough, folded it over 3 or 4 times and shaped it. This time I only made it into two loafs so they wouldn't be so small. I covered them, left them near the warm pellet stove and went about the business of bathing children and putting away laundry, agh the glamorous life of a mom! In the evening after the kids were tucked in I cranked the oven to 500 degrees and baked my bread. I was really happy with how it came out.

This is a basic white bread, nothing fancy but it was very similar to my "Soccer Day Bread" and very similar to the bread from the day before. I think that all my starters are doing is allowing me to use all purpose flour instead of bread flour but the taste and texture isn't really changed.