Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 2

So there's baking going on. Because I want to learn a very specific type of bread:

Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread. 

I can make a lovely white bread loaf, and if I treat it like white bread with regular commercial yeast, I can add sourdough and make it up to half-wheat: transitional bread. But I want to have the option of doing the whole thing in whole wheat. I like whole wheat; I like what it does to my body.

So anyway, Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

This is Part 2. Where we eat tasty zucchini bread.
Yes, that's relevant.

I haven't done much with my sourdough start lately. It's been in the fridge a couple days now, because if I keep it on the counter when I'm not using it nearly every day, then it gets a bit gross. I think it's the heat. It's been warm, downright hot for the area - got up into the 90s, with something like 83727495% humidity. The start doesn't like that. So I keep it in the fridge. Where it's not gross, but it doesn't do much, either.

So the first thing was to wake up my start and get it happy. You do that by feeding it, and I needed to make room in my jar before I could feed it. So I made zucchini bread. And that part of the starter that the recipes are always saying you should discard, I "discarded" -- right into the bowl for the zucchini bread. Which turned out yummy. I sort of used this recipe, but had to adapt it to cycle my start. Most quick breads are easy to just add start to; a sourdough start that's fed pretty close to a 1:1 ratio of flour and water has about the same consistency as most batters. Or, you can do what I did with this recipe, and try to reduce the liquid, which means that you can count the flour in the start as part of the flour in the recipe. You're supposed to be able to leave out the baking soda and baking powder, and let the sourdough make it rise, but I didn't try that this time. This is what I ended up with:


Sourdough Zucchini Bread
aprox 1c sourdough start (be generous)
2/3 c oil
1 3/4c sugar
2 eggs
2t vanilla
2c shredded zucchini (I eyeballed it)
1c whole wheat flour
1c white flour plus some extra
1t salt
1t baking soda
1t baking powder

Preheat to 325, spray 2 loaf pans with Pam. Mix up the wet ingredients, except the zucchini. Add salt, soda, and powder, mix. Add flours, and adjust to get the right consistency (It should just look like batter. Kind of thick batter. Eyeball it.). Stir in the zucchini just until incorporated. Bake for about 40-45 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes, then remove from the pan.

Snarf. My kids more or less inhaled this. I'm getting complaints because I'm out of zucchini, so there is no more. Pretty sure that I can find another zucchini somewhere; tis the season.

And now my start is ready to make bread!