Sourdough, cake and inspiration

This weekend it was time to try out my rye sourdough starter which has been slowly fermenting for the last month. It had gone from smelling of paint stripper to boozy, sharp apples so at last I could experiment with the sponge method and get baking.

This technique involves mixing together a ladleful of your starter with some flour and warm water the evening before you want to bake and leaving it in a warm place overnight. The next morning it had transformed into a frothy milkshake and was good to go. The next stage was making the dough by adding more flour and salt and kneading until smooth and shiny. This took me about 10 minutes using the satisfyingly aggressive and noisy French kneading technique to which I am now a firm devotee.

You then leave the dough for an hour or two, before deflating and re-forming into a ball, then repeat the resting, deflating and reforming stage 2-3 times until you have a lovely fluffy, smooth pillow to play with. The final stage is to divide the dough and form into loaves to pop in proving baskets for the final rising stage (again another 2-3 hours). Finally by tea time they were ready to go in the oven and by supper time we were tucking in to some delicious fresh sourdough.

This is definitely a technique for a long lazy weekend, rather than when you want bread in a hurry but the results were amazing. My best sourdough yet.

It also gave me a chance to try out my new signature slash to the crust. The H for Hels' Bakehouse looks great, although much to the delight of my husband, who works at the SECC, it also looks like the new Hydro arena in Glasgow and has now been christened 'Hydro bread'. I spy a marketing opportunity!

In between all of this bread making it was the usual weekend mixture of dog walking and child ferrying. My son goes to a drama class on a Saturday so whilst he was busy becoming a star, I took advantage and headed off for a coffee and a cupcake at The Butterfly Bakery & Cafe in Bearsden. I've been driving past for a while and looking for an excuse to pop in and I'm glad I did because the cake was delicious and it's the perfect sneaky treat for busy Mum's looking for a sanity saving 20 minutes peace and quiet.

To keep my motivation levels up (with less calorific side effects) I've also joined the ManicMums group on Linkedin and would definitely recommend this and the website mumandcareer.co.uk for anyone struggling to balance work, family, career, guilt and ambitions for a better way of doing all of this. It's full of inspiring advice from like minded people and there's nothing like feeling you're not alone to give you the confidence to keep going.