Sourdough Bread

  I have embarked upon another journey, only, this one has me a little more excited than pasta and canning. I feel like Tom Hanks' character on the beach in Cast Away when he has his arms extended to the heavens shouting, "I HAVE MADE FIRE." Only, I would shout, "I HAVE MADE BREAD." Bread you say? Anyone can make bread .... Well, as it turns out this last statement is true, but there is a little twist ... you are only allowed to use three ingredients; flour, water and salt. No store bought yeast, no oil or butter, no fancy dough conditioners or vital gluten, no store bought pre-mixed dough in a bag ... just flour, water and salt. What do you say now ...?

  If you are not already familiar with this process then you will be amazed at how easy it is to do, how nice it looks out of the oven and how supremely awesome it tastes. This was made with only three ingredients, some time to prepare and read about the process and some common kitchen items. I am not going to describe the step by step detailed process to you or shoot a video because many people before me have already done this and they are much better at it than I am. I will give you a road map though and provide you with my lessons learned. I started this journey about a week and a half ago and had some failures in the beginning, but now I know what to do and maybe I can save you a little time if you care to try this. First of all this is what my first success looked like out of the oven this morning:

I think it looks pretty sexy. :-)  Anyone can do this. It might even be fun to do with kids because it is that easy. First, learn about sourdough starters and how to make them by visiting this link. Sourdough Baking by John Ross will explain most of what you need to know about making a sourdough starter and he will even give you a recipe for making the bread, but I suggest you read on and follow a different bread recipe which will unfold as we go. Don't add commercial yeast either. If you follow John's direction (minus the commercial yeast) it will work. I will mention a few things here while we are on the subject of sourdough starters. If you have city water, don't use the water straight out of the tap for the dough or the starter. It may kill your local wild yeasts that have setup camp in your sourdough starter container. This was the cause of all of my failures. As soon as I stopped using my city water out of the tap, things started coming together. Hopefully I can help someone avoid this frustration because it almost stopped me from continuing. Feel free to use well water from the tap or city water from a Brita filter or I read you can leave a container of city water out on your counter for 8 to 10 hours and the chlorine will go away.

Next, watch the video below. It will explain a technique that somehow attracted a cult following. Very similar techniques are used in other place around the world, but somehow in all our wisdom and gadgetry we lost this process and Mark Bittman and Jim Leahy are here to remind us.

Ok, the important parts to take away from the first video is the container Jim Leahy used to bake the bread and how simple his technique is. The next video will tie this technique together with sourdough baking and provide an easy to use and remember recipe for the bread. I want to warn you, the video is a little freaky, but it has all the info you need to get where we are going.

That's it! It couldn't be any easier. Here is the bread recipe if you missed it:

No Knead Sourdough Bread (1,2,3 method or 1,1,2,3 method for you detailists)

1 c sourdough starter

1 c warm water

2 tsp salt

3 c flour

There may be some differences due to oven type, choice of baking vessel or sourdough starter characteristics, but this is the general process which can be tweaked for your set of variables. Mix the ingredients together in a bowl. This step shouldn't take more than a minute. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or equivalent covering. Let the dough rise for 6 to 12 hours. Many factors contribute to this time. Ambient temperature, water temperature, sourdough starter yeast population .. etc. When the dough has doubled, put your baking vessel in the oven and turn the oven temperature to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is at the set temperature, carefully (so you don't deflate it) dump the dough on to a floured surface. Fold all four sides toward the center of the dough. Sprinkle corn meal in your baking vessel or all over the outside of your dough. Put the dough in the baking vessel and cover for 25 minutes. Remove the lid from the baking vessel and bake for 10 minutes more.

A few things I noticed ...

I used a $10 Granite Ware Roaster to make the loaf this morning. I also purchased an unglazed clay vessel from Romertopf for the same purpose. I noticed they definitely have different baking characteristics and I am guessing it has to do with the thickness of the vessel material. My loaves darken much quicker on the thinner Granite Ware roaster than with the Romertopf. I am guessing the you could also use the glazed ceramic insert from a CrockPot. For the crock lid just used some tin foil because most CrockPot lids have some sort of plastic handle that won't survive the high oven temperatures. It is important that the vessel have a lid, preferably the vessel should be bigger than your loaf so you can get it out and use some sort of edible grit on the bottom of the vessel to keep the dough from sticking. You can use corn meal, multi-grain cereal like Uncle Bob's, wheat bran or anything like those things already mentioned. Also, the instructions for the sourdough starter tell you to throw half of it away when you feed it. It also instructs to add 1/2 c water and 1/2 c of flour. You don't have to throw it out. You can use it to make all kinds of things like pancakes or biscuits. If you know you are making several loaves then add more than 1/2 c of water and flour. Just make sure there is enough starter left to continue the colony.

My intent here was not to re-invent sourdough bread. People have been making this bread for thousands of years. It doesn't need to be re-invented, but somehow it seems out of reach for most people which seems completely wrong. Maybe it just needs to be re-introduced. Something that was a common everyday process has been replaced with a loaf of Wonder bread form the grocery store. I feel sorrow for those people who will never experience what I felt and tasted this morning. Experiment with it. Try making rye, whole wheat, multi-grain, pumpernickle, ciabatta, english muffins, buscuits, sweet breads ...... the list is endless, but use the process explained above to do it. 

If you give this a try, you won't be sorry and maybe we'll get a chance to break bread together sometime. :-)

TTFN

B