Tasting Sourdough for the First Time

This fall I am teaching a class called, You Are What You Eat, for incoming Freshmen. 

For our first meeting I baked a large sourdough bread for them to taste.

Their first assignment was to write a bread review. Did they like the crust? Was the flavor appealing? How did the interior appear to them?

Ten of the fifteen students didn't really like the bread.

The crumb had too many holes. The flour on the crust really annoyed them. So did the crust, which required too much work to chew and was not the color they were accustomed to. Mostly, they complained about the sour flavor, which several reported did not taste like "normal" bread.

A few like it adding the compliment that it tasted like what you could get in a restaurant and one thought it would make a decent Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich.

I think I'm learning something about what incoming Freshmen consider "normal" food.