Sourdough Rolls; a Failure That I'm Tired of Sitting On

I know, I know. Back in December I announced that my next entry would be sourdough bread. It took forever to get here because I couldn't get it right.

Triggered an existential crisis of a sort.

So, let's discuss the great teacher.

Not quite, but I do like her philosophy.
Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.
Just, please, clean up as you go.

I'm calling it a failure, although my end result was edible and my family liked it just fine. So, what happened? I'm not sure. Let's dive in.

The recipe I used was:

2 1/2 cups of AP Flour

2 cups of ripe (that means fed) starter

1/2 cup of room temp water

1 1/2 teaspoons each of salt and sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons of instant yeast.

So, as you can see, what I'm trying to make with this is little more than a sour flavored white loaf. I figured I'd try it and see what happened.

I put it all together as per normal. When it was time for forming it into a boule (French for ball) it wouldn't hold its shape. So I kneaded it some more. Still wouldn't hold its shape.

This was my fourth attempt at making a decent loaf of sourdough. By now I had completely lost interest in this project, but decided to push on because my daughter saw what I was doing and she loves sourdough bread.

And push on I did. After deciding I didn't want a loaf, I weighed out my dough and started making rolls. The original plan was to make twelve, but apparently I can't do math.

I'm not really a numbers person. Usually not this bad, though.

375 degrees until they registered 195 on my instant read thermometer.

I got this.

This is where you should be imagining that little stinger from The Price Is Right when the contestant loses the game.

Where's the failure here? The didn't have the right color. Their texture was wrong. The dough never held its shape.

If I had presented these for grading in baking school, I'd have gotten a bad score. If I tried to pass these off as viable at the bakery, I might be fired.

They tasted ok. My kids loved them, and my wife was very polite about them. I ate a couple myself.

But I wouldn't put them on the table for Thanksgiving dinner.

Simply being edible doesn't necessarily mean they're good.

So, what's the takeaway here? Maybe I need to use bread flour for this instead of AP? Or use a brand with a slightly higher protein amount, like Gold Medal or King Arthur?

Maybe I need to throw a little vital gluten into the recipe. That might do the trick.

Or, I could throw in the towel completely and admit defeat.

Naw, that's not going to happen. The kitchen is a laboratory, where a great many fields of science overlap. You got physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, and in today's case, psychology.

So, I haven't been successful yet. Bill Gates said, "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."

Well, I'm pretty smart, and I have more losses than a lot of people have had attempts. The sourdough experiments will not close until I have a worthy specimen. I'll share it once it happens.

While I don't care for absolutes, it helps to remember that it's just bread, and that it's all practice.

Until then, love people and cook them good food.