The starter seems to have really taken off.  I was really excited to see that it was starting to look just like it does in the books.  When you pulled it apart you could really see that it was forming lots of air pockets like shown below…

The first non-yeast (or at least manufactured yeast) bread I made was from the ‘Flour Water Salt Yeast’ book which I have ben using almost exclusively since the beginning of the month.  I was initially impressed with the amount of rise that I got out of the dough when only using the starter.  This was the first time that I thought the dough had truly tripled in size…

When I formed the loaves it certainly seemed like I was working with more dough than I had previously.  Everything seemed to be going perfectly.  However, after baking the bread it turned out that the loaves were rather flat…

I’ve been overly cautious not to burn the loaves despite both book encouraging you to do so.  I thought these looked perfect coming out of the oven but the dough was soft and chewy – maybe too soft?  The bread itself tasted very much like sour dough – Im not sure why.  I don’t think I let the starter sit too long but perhaps I did.

So I’ve now decided to try using some of the starter for a recipe from the Tartine bread book.  I was a little amazed to see that their process for baking with the starter was almost totally different from what I had been doing.  I started that last night and will share that story once the bread is baked.

If I’ve learned anything this month it’s that theres A LOT more to baking bread than I had initially thought.