Today is the day!

Finally a break in the weather! The forecast for today was partly cloudy and fairly warm, so I decided to be bold and brave and prepare my sour doughs for the solar oven. I figured that eventhough Haiti has significantly more sunshine than South Dakota, there must also be less than "ideal" days where it is partly cloudy and so I wanted to try the oven on such a day.

As it turns out, the day started out more cloudy than "partly" and my oven barely reached 200 F. But, it is over 180 F and my dough was already ready to go, so in they went. After two hours, of which the last hour was much more sunny and the oven reached 250F, I could smell the sweet smell of bread all the way to the garden where I was weeding.

They were DELICIOUS!! Even my husband, who is not a bread eater, loved the whole wheat. That was was by far the best starter and taste, but the white and rye were right on its trail. They are not "sour" but have a slightly sweet taste and are light in texture too. Wow, what a success.


Here is the white dough. I had only made a tiny little bit to try it out, but after two hours it had risen double in size. This is before rising.









The wheat was a slightly bigger dough and rose wonderfully. This picture is also before it has had time to rise.








The rye performed great and rose better than some of my yeast rye breads in the past. Again, before the dough had risen.







Don't let the flat shaped fool you, I had simply made very little dough. This is the wheat bread.









This is the wheat cut in half.











This is the white bread.







And this is the rye bread.







For the dough I had a smaller version of roughly:
- 2 cups of starter
- 3 cups of flour
- 1/2 cup of honey (you could also use sugar, but I like honey)
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. cardamom in the white and the wheat
- 2-3 tablespoons Canola oil

You want your starter (sponge) to be a soft consistency, slightly firmer than a mousse au chocolat (what better analogy :-) ! ) The dough needs to be not-sticky but not too heavy, so balance the amount of flour.

I kept about 1/4 cup of starter and I have been feeding them once a day the past week. That seems to work just fine. Since I from here on want to bake regularly and need 2 cups of starter for each loaf, I will no longer throw out part of the starter when I feed it, but simply keep feeding it daily until I have 2 cups worth and then bake another loaf, starting the process all over again.

I will definately continue with the starters and baking in the oven all summer long!