Sourdough weekend and Monday

When I visited Danni this last time, she sent me home with some sourdough starter. Here it sits on Danni's counter getting ready to go on a very long trip.


Here is my suitcase in which it travelled.


Here it is after I got home and got up the courage to look in my suitcase for fear it had blown up all over everything. Luckily, for me, it hadnt. (Good thing we double bagged it. Im just sayin.)


Now it sits on my counter! Yay!


And out of the bag. If you look closely you can see the lid is a little rounded.....Im not sure how much longer it would have played nice and stayed in the container.


Now I get to open it up. It had sloshed all over in the container, but was a good girl and never tried to actually get out.


This is the beginning of my wonderful sourdough starter. It traveled from Ang, to Danni, and now, to me. Michigan to Oregon to Illinois.


That was over a week ago. So this weekend I decided it was time to break out some sourdough goodness. What better way to do that than to make that great sourdough carrot cake. Its Monday now and this is all that is left.


And then today, I made some sourdough bread. (well, actually rolls.)
I did use the bread machine to make the dough.


But before you get ready to call me a great big cheater head...it was just for the dough. JUST the dough.


Then I punched it down and made it into little bun type rolls.


Then I let them rise.


Then I baked them. They were not really browning up very well, so I brushed on some melted butter and then turned on the broiler for a few minutes. That seemed to help quite a bit.


They were very tasty. They had a crispy texture to the exterior and a nice airy, tenderness on the interior.

But as someone I know would say, they didnt really have enough sourdough taste to them. It wasnt that knock your socks off sourdough tang that I was looking for. Sigh. Ah, well....I guess Ill have to go back to the drawing board and try out some of those great tips that Danni mentioned to enhance the sourdough flavor. I was kinda hoping that there would just be great yeast waiting to be captured here in Illinois...