Introducing Lionel...

"Hello I'm Lionel"

You've come to this blog for some exciting adventures with Lionel right? So why then are you staring at a mug full of what looks like mud? I'm sure you're all a bit puzzled and eager to press on and solve this mystery, "The Mystery of the Mug of Mud", but patience, my crime solving readers, we'll get to that. First up we have to travel back in time a little to where it all began. Back to the dawn of time. Or the noughties to be more precise.

I've always been interested in cooking and baking- not only in the process, but in the outcome and the eating. I've also always loved bread, whether it be a simple  white loaf, a French stick, a foccacia or a sourdough with a crust so crusty that some serious gum damage could ensue if not eaten with care. I'm also a bit curious when it comes to food and find myself wondering "could I make that at home?" So when it became evident that, yes, bread is possible to be baked at home, and not necessarily in a machine, I was curious.

I played around with many yeasted breads, picking up tips from a wide variety of books. Mr Yeast was a fairly consistent and manageable fellow, and lent himself to a wide variety from ciabattas to hot cross buns, but I was still curious- could I do the bread making without him? Would he ever forgive me? Could I live with myself if I left Mr Yeast on the shelf and tried out something new and exciting- sourdough!? Well, of course I could, Mr Yeast is after all an inanimate object and doesn't have any feelings.

My first sourdough leaven lived in the fridge. He was a mixture of flour and water and according to the books I was reading, he could be kept indefinitely in the fridge as long as he was refreshed every couple of months. They also assured me that the thick black layer on top was perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. The stench was quite normal too. Apparently. I think I perhaps tried to bake one loaf with it which resulted in a stodgy brick that even toasting couldn't rescue. So it was back to Mr Yeast for the time being. Had he been more than a can of dried pellets I'm sure he would have been pleased.

For Christmas 2010 my beautiful wife gave me the gift of sourdough- a sourdough bread baking course to be quite precise. This was to be at Red Beard bakery in Trentham- a bakery whose sourdough bread we had sampled on a few previous occasions. They made damn fine bread and I was eager to learn their secrets, come home with a stash of loaves and most importantly a sourdough leaven to use in my own bread baking.

It wasn't until October 2011 that I was able to make the trip to Trentham to take the course which ran on a Sunday for 6 hours. The course was amazing, from the tips and tricks to the thrill of baking our own loaves in a wood fired scotch oven. I'll go into more detail of the course in another post, but for now let me introduce Lionel.

Lionel was borne of two organic potato skins, some rye flour and filtered water. It's all very technical as to what happens, but essentially good bacteria grows in the mixture and it is this that is added to flour and water to make sourdough bread. A sourdough leaven or starter. To keep an active leaven one must feed it every night- bit like a pet- to keep it alive. Once again I'll go further into that in another post.

So that photo up the top- that's Lionel. And he just can't wait to get into all the breads I'm going to be baking! But as I'm a softie at heart I couldn't neglect Mr Yeast forever, and it so happens, Lionel and Mr Yeast are now firm friends. So while this blog will focus mainly on sourdough breads from the book 'Wild Sourdough' I will also be making some good old yeasted breads also.

Welcome then, to the Adventures of Lionel & Friends!