Baking Sourdough

The long awaited (well, for some!) chatty sourdough post!!

My first sourdough experiment was about four years ago, and did not get beyond the starter. That's right; no ACTUAL bread was made! Even with six weeks experience under my belt now, I couldn't tell you exactly what went wrong, but I'm guessing that the starter must have starved to death. So my confidence was shattered, I decided this was just going to be one more failure I would have to accept... And then recently I got chatting to a delightful young lady, who made it sound sooo easy I just had to give it another go!!

Having pretty much completed the beginner phase, I now want to hold the hands of a few more people who'd like to make their own proper bread and say (as I always do!) "If I can do it, anyone can!" It's a bit of a commitment, but it isn't hard work at all. If you don't consider yourself a "baker", ie. you've had your fair share of flat cakes, or burnt biscuits, sourdough might be for you! It doesn't demand the same sort of exactness that other more delicate baking does. You don't need a science degree to manage the chemistry of flour and water (though I imagine that might make it even more interesting!) As I observe the culture and experiment with it I make guesses about what might result from each change in quantity. If I get caught up in a line at the supermarket checkout I consider what the extra fifteen minutes wait might mean for my bread. I have been pleasantly surprised over the course of the last few weeks to find that generally my dough will forgive me for neglecting it and still produce a rustically beautiful loaf!

One question I've frequently been asked since I started is "Is it worth doing?" Well, if you're reading this, I think it might be. To be fair, I'm a stay at home mum with three tiny dependent kids, what's one more baby to feed, eh? I'm home all day anyways, might as well have something to show for it, blah blah blah... If you work full time you might have to play around with it so it suits your schedule, say, make your dough in the evening, refrigerate overnight and bake it in the morning, which is totally doable and depending on the timing of when I want to eat, I regularly do that too. 

But then again, if you care about what you put in your mouth, if you "eat to live" as well as "live to eat", there might be something to it. I have noticed that my sourdough bread is much gentler on my digestion than anything you can buy at the supermarket, even though it is made with the much-maligned WHITE flour! And it looks impressive, and tastes amazing... If any of that matters to you, it just might be WORTH doing.

So, "Where's the recipe???" I hear you begging! "Come now, surely we've listened to your proselytising for long enough!!!" Well for that my friends... You will have to persevere a little longer with me! I started out with a loooong recipe for making and tending my starter, and then an even longer recipe (25 steps!!) for making the bread!! When it came to the recipe for the bread I was nearly defeated. Pleased with myself for growing such a lively culture, I read all those steps and nearly chucked it thinking "Oh who can be bothered!" But actually I've found that the overly exact recipe has helped me to understand what's happening to the ingredients along the way, helped me to refine my process, and test-drive dropping steps out if I thought I might be able to do without them. 

Before you really get going though, let's get one thing straight; yes, to begin with it's going to be a teaspoon of this and so many grams of that... But I hope that as you get going, you will start to get a feeeeeeel for things. You will start to see, Oh, this dough is a bit wetter than yesterday's, what sort of bread will that make? Whoops, I gave it four hours instead of three, fingers crossed we still get something edible! Don't be wedded to the recipe, I'm sure our great great great great... great great grandmothers weren't! 

And that's what I really love about this bread; when I'm up to my elbows in flour paste, and there's a light snow of wheaty dust all over every surface in my home... I feel deeply connected to every other living being who has done this before me. Who has taken the bare basics of flour, water and salt, trusted God with the leaven, and brought forth so many beautiful loaves of health-giving, love-laden bread for their families to enjoy. No one who baked such a loaf could possibly be resentful of the little effort that it took to maintain, or that it didn't make neat sandwiches, or that the bubbles throughout weren't uniform in size. All of that is just part of its charm, a reflection of the day it was baked, the fact that it wasn't just a slice of bread but a relationship between two living things. After all isn't that what the ethical production of food is all about? Whether it's meats, vegetables or grains, it is quite simply; the respect of one living being for another. Love your starter and it will love you back.

Two things though; if you like super-exactness in recipe and result... This probably isn't for you. And in that same vein, if you hate mess, and any sort of mould/ferment makes you feel queasy just thinking of it... Yeah, this definitely isn't for you!!! Me? I can cope with every surface in the kitchen being covered with a light dusting of flour. I'm totally happy with, and grateful for, a flour-covered tea towel that hasn't been washed in six weeks (and isn't going to be any time soon!) And I can deal with rescuing a ferment on the brink of disaster. If that doesn't sound like you... Well, maybe still give it a go, maybe sourdough is the gift that will give you an appreciation for all those formerly vomit-worthy things... Or maybe you will learn that $5.50+++ a loaf is totally worth it to you!!! For me, no way mate, I want all the perks of real homemade bread, including a house that smells like real homemade bread...


Yes, you saw it coming... I have become a total #SourdoughSnob!!! The final battle for me will be coming to terms with the price of organic bread flour, and then I'll never be able to eat a square sandwich again! Now while I'm off to design my "Sourdoughaholics Anonymous" badges, here are some useful links for you:



Making a "Starter":

http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-your-own-sourdough-starter-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-47337

I think it helps that I started in the Summer, my starter was nice and warm and happy. I'm going to be very interested to see how the change in weather impacts my starter and my baking.



Making Sourdough Bread:

http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-sourdough-bread-224367

As I've said, I've now radically simplified this recipe for my own use (in fact I do the whole thing from memory, and just set alarms on my phone to remind me when to do the next thing) but I'm still grateful for the over-abundance of steps because I think it gives you a feel for the process, rather than just blindly following along. I hope you'll find that too. Also note, I was baking one enormous loaf from this recipe and have since halved the recipe and I bake one small loaf. Mainly because I feel the bread is best in its first 24 hours, and I don't mind baking every day, and the simple fact that getting a knife through the middle of it is slightly less messy with a smaller loaf.



******* If you've gotten this far, but the idea of fermenting flour and water bubbling away in your cupboard still makes you queasy, but you'd like to make beautiful bread, then I ask that you to Google "Dutch Oven Bread", and try that. (Being familiar with this method of baking really helped me when it came to making sourdough because the process is much the same.)