I’d like to bake sourdough loaves in my bread machine. I don’t mind if it takes a while, as long as it’s easy and I don’t get my hands dirty. I want to use my own starter. I don’t want to use dried yeast.
My approach is going to be iterative. Experimental. Test, note, observe, adjust, repeat. Ideally I’d like to bake overnight on the timer.
Although a web search throws up a lot of tantalising number of hits they soon dwindle. Most suggest using dried yeast or using the machine just to make the dough, finishing the loaf in the oven. I found one useful website, and it has been very useful. It is www.mygreekdish.com and it has a nice breakdown of the steps. Even better, the steps are for the same bread machine as the one I have, the now discontinued Panasonic SD-ZX2522. This is pretty handy.
As for the starters I’m using the method outlined by Andrew Whitley in his book Bread Matters. I’ve created two starters as outlined early in his book; a rye starter and a wheat starter.
As I say, what happens now will be based mostly on experimentation, iteration, observation and tweaking. There will occasional attempts at understanding but, on the whole, I will be trying to change just one things at a time, then seeing what happens.
So let’s see what happens.