A LITTLE BIT SOUR
I first made sourdough about 10 years ago, I want to say, from a starter my friend Dale gave me. I kept that starter for about a year and made bread from it all of once. It was really good bread, but I never felt I really had time to make it. My friend Kat from work gave me some starter last week, and I thought I would try it again.
My first attempt to make sourdough with the new starter was kind of a flop. I wasn’t sure whether to leave it out and risk it going too sour, or put it in the fridge and risk it not being active enough to raise the bread. I did the latter, and it wasn’t active enough. So on Sunday, I divided the starter in half, fed both halves, and left one out on the counter (covered) and one in the fridge, feeding the counter one daily.
I’ve never been much of a baker. I make pretty good chocolate chip cookies, and my brownies are OK, but right now my stand mixer needs repairs and I generally don’t like to be beholden to a recipe, and baking is such an exact science that it kind of scares me off. I know bread baking is more of a variable art, so I figured I would try getting my hands dirty.
I broke out my shiny new kitchen scale and carefully weighed out the starter and the flour, measured out the water, and combined them into a dough. It was super sticky, but it’s humid out. I didn’t really have a good bowl for this, so I used the liner from my pressure cooker.
After a 20 minute rest, I added the salt and kneaded it a bit in the bowl with my hands. I placed it back in the bowl, covered the bowl with plastic wrap, and went off to do something else for an hour.
I floured my largest cutting board and turned the dough out onto it. The dough sucked up a lot of the flour and became a lot easier to handle. The instructions I was reading said “fold it like a business letter”. Not being entirely sure what that meant, I stretched the dough out to cover the cutting board and folded it over itself in thirds, which seemed to work. I turned it 90 degrees, flattened it out, and folded it over itself in thirds again, and then put it back in the bowl to rise, covered, for yet another hour.
After that rise, I turned the dough back out onto the floured cutting board, divided it in half, and shaped each half vaguely into a circle. I covered the proto-loaves with plastic wrap and wandered off again for 20 minutes this time.
The recipe I was mostly following said to shape the loaves into tight rounds and then put them into bowls lined with floured cloths. I didn’t have any cloths in my house, floured or otherwise, and so I put some paper towels into my two largest bowls, floured them, and put the formed loaves in them, seam side up, covered the bowls, and went to order some towels from the Internet for next time. The loaves rose for about 90 minutes.
When my timer went off, I filled a 9×12 pan with water and put it into the lowest rack of the oven, and preheated the oven to 450. I set the timer for another hour and went back to my TV, getting up occasionally to check the water level in the pan.
Finally, the timer went off again! I gently turned the loaves directly onto two small baking sheets which I had greased with olive oil, slashed each one three times with my chef’s knife, and put them almost immediately in the oven (I stepped back to let the steam out first).
35 minutes later, it was bread! I lifted them off of the baking sheets with a spatula and, lacking a rack, placed them onto small plates to cool.
After my patience ran out they cooled enough, I sliced into one and it was delicious. A little tangy, surprisingly sweet, and with a crunchy crust and wonderfully soft interior. I think I’ll try this again on Sunday.
RECIPE
- 2 cups active sourdough starter
- 24.25 oz unbleached bread flour
- 1 3/4 c. filtered water
- 2 tsp. Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- olive oil to grease the baking sheets
The directions are as above. There’s a lot of waiting around in breadmaking, it seems like.
–c
NOTES
I’m not sure where most people come across sourdough starter. As I just mentioned, I got mine from friends. You can order them online, or see if a friend of yours is raising a culture, or go to San Francisco and buy some there.
The original recipe called for 21 1/4 oz all-purpose flour and 3 oz whole wheat flour. As you can see above, I’m not much of a baker, so I just used 24 1/4 oz of bread flour and it came out just fine. The water was also supposed to be room temperature, but I used it maybe 10 minutes out of the fridge and was still pleased with the results.
I took three books on bread baking out of the library, and I will see if I glean any more information from them by Sunday.