Blog Entry #2, written by Shiyun Huang
Instagram: @huangshiyun44
We asked the sourdough community on Instagram to tell their sourdough stories. We found all of them moving and beautiful. Enjoy reading about your fellow sourdough friends. Please feel free to leave comments.
As an Asian I know a lot of my friends and family don't enjoy the sourness and hard crust of sourdough country loaf. They prefer the Asian style breads which are usually soft, sweet and fluffy. One time when I was shopping with them, they immediately put down the bread when seeing, "sourdough," on the package.
But I have learned that sourdough baking has a lot more possibilities. It just means using wild yeast to naturally leaven the dough. Apart from the classic sourdough country loaf, I can still make all kinds of soft sourdough bread for my family to enjoy.
(Picture of sweet stiff starter for making sourdough sweet milk bread, and regular 100% hydration starter)
One big reason I love baking sourdough is scoring. I have always loved drawing, but I don't practice often. With sourdough scoring, I have a lot more chance to practice and try out different designs, after all I need bread every day and why not score them before baking!
I am so into scoring now that I not only score on country loaf, but also on soft loaf like Japanese shokupan. Another good thing about this is no matter how the scoring turned out, we still get to enjoy the rich flavors from the long fermentation. There is nothing to lose when giving your artistic talent a try!
(Picture of scoring on sourdough country loaves)
(Picture of scoring on sourdough shokupan with paws print)
(Picture of scoring on sourdough shokupan with cats)
Sourdough baking has given me lots of opportunities to try out my bread art ideas, as well as healthy yummy breads that are easier to digest.
I accidentally started sourdough baking because I couldn't buy commercial yeast at the beginning of the pandemic. I could not be happier about this decision and I am looking forward to trying out more sourdough baking such as sourdough pizza, croissant and panettone...
Your own beautiful take on seed art, shokupan scoring and innovative breadart are all so unique and beautiful Shiyun. So happy to know you even more through this blog.
I was surprised that the sunflower design was very cute and colored. The cat score is also great