sourdough
Over the past few years there has been a “slow” trend bubbling into the mainstream. We’ve seen slow food; a maker movement; slow TV; the minimalism of fewer, better, things; #Vanlife and hipsters all making their way into the zeitgeist.
It has all felt to me like a reaction to an increasingly frantic pace of life. But now, facing the challenges of an enforced slowdown spurred by a global health threat, it almost seems prescient. Forced to adapt to our new normal, we’re all switching gears.
One of my friends spent a day last week banging together something of a victory garden from some wooden pallets she had in the garage. I taught a girlfriend how to make a homemade sugaring solution so that she could wax her legs now that her esthetician is closed. Protective face masks are unavailable, so people are teaching themselves how to sew. And, if social media is anything to go by, everybody is baking.
Bread was one of the first things to disappear as panic shopping decimated grocery stores at the start of all this. That sparked a run on baking basics like yeast and flour. This astonishes me in gluten free and low carb Los Angeles, but it would appear that we’re finding comfort in our kitchens. It has become something of a joke in this moment that we’re all working on our “Covid 19” – the 19 pounds we’re going to pack on now that we’re homebound with our refrigerators, and locked out of our gyms. I’m not really a bread eater — I do live in gluten free LA, after all — but the senior neighbor enjoys sourdough for her daily avocado toast, so I am motivated to try to make the stuff. (The other thing everybody is doing is watching Tiger King. And yes, I know it’s the No. 1 most-watched title in the USA this week. And yes, I know you want to talk about it. But I’m sorry: I just can’t do it.)
I was able to find flour at a local market, but you can’t get packaged yeast even on Amazon right now. So, eleven days ago, I made my first attempt at cultivating a starter. I looked it up online and found the procedure was as simple as mixing together some flour and water and leaving it somewhere warm to capture wild yeast and ambient bacteria. I put my container of paste on the top of the fridge and dutifully started feeding it daily with more flour and water. For the first few days, I thought maybe I had made a successful batch of homemade glue, because it didn’t look like it was doing anything.
Bread-making frustrates many new bakers because there is no fool-proof method. The success of any given recipe is subject to a myriad of variables that are unique to each home cook’s situation. Yeast is a living thing and factors like the warmth of the kitchen, humidity levels in the air, oven temperature, altitude, and the type and age of flour you’re using, all affect it. The wild yeasts that grow in starter are even more fickle creatures than the store-bought ones, and the experts say the only way to get it right is to develop a feel for it.
It’s intimidating AF, but bread is primal. A few years ago, researchers discovered evidence of flatbread dating back some 14,500 years at a site northeastern Jordan. The bible calls bread “the staff of life.” And if gold rush pioneers wagon training across the harsh American landscape in the 1800s were able to produce sourdough on their cooking fires, then I figured I could probably churn out a decent loaf even in my 1960s-equipped rental kitchen. I just had to try.
It seems like a tiny thing, but when I woke up on March 21 to a bubbly, frothy tub of sour-smelling goo, it was truly a high point of the week. Amid wall-to-wall news coverage of sickness and death, I had brought something to life.
That day, I worked up my first loaf. I didn’t have the recommended cooking vessel, a Dutch oven, so I took inspiration from the wagon trains and used my cast iron pan. The resulting loaf tasted sour and lovely, but it was about as light and airy as pudding. Regardless, it was good enough for avocado toast.
Over the next week, I continued the daily care and feeding of my micro-organisms and watched the paste change in character. When I took the lid off this weekend, it smelled more like bread than yogurt for the first time. And when I mixed in its daily meal of flour and water, it produced a new type of spongey bubbles throughout. It felt like the right time to try again.
For this second attempt, I brought out a new round of tools. I had been meaning to get a big enameled pot anyway, since I’m committed to reviving my regular habit of hosting casual Sunday “family dinners” for my friends when this is all over, so I put an order in on Amazon and it arrived a few days later. I also dug out my kitchen scale and a bench scraper — both items I happen to have in my apartment but which I forgot about because I had hidden them from myself them deep in the bottom of the kitchen graveyard, where I store all the generally useless kitchen items that I can’t bring myself to throw away, like the spiralizer, potato ricer, and rolling pin.
If we’ve been making bread for millennia, then maybe there’s something instinctive in it? I decided to use intuition as my guide through the process this time. I started the day by mixing together the three ingredients needed — flour, water and salt. I disregarded the recipe’s prescribed rise times, instead opting to follow such vague cues as how “alive” and “elastic” the dough felt in my hands before moving it along to the next stage.
It took a long, slow day and a lot of trust in the process, but I think I have it figured out. The end result was imperfect and perfect at the same time and now I’m confident the senior neighbor will have her avocado toast — at least as long as I can find flour.
Success: my sourdough bread, fresh from the oven and still steaming. My senior neighbor will have her avocado toast!
Here’s what I did, in case you want to jump on the wagon train, too:
The recipe is a classic from Claire Saffitz that I found here in the New York Times (and pasted below). The techniques I followed are inspired by her collaboration with Brad Leone on his Bon Appetit YouTube show “It’s Alive” a couple of years ago (watch it here), plus some sense memories of my mom’s home baking from childhood. She uses a pizza dough recipe to make the best cinnamon buns.
I didn’t need two loaves, so I split the recipe in half. But you might want to make the best use of your time by baking in bulk because it takes days if you are starting from zero, or a whole day or two if you’ve already got starter.
Also, my starter still doesn’t pass the “float test.” Claire and Brad’s float test was also a failure, so I eyeballed the bubbles and figured it was good enough. It was. And it will be better next time.
Claire Saffitz’s Sourdough Bread Recipe
Ingredients
• Mature starter, which you should keep refrigerated until you’re ready to use it.
• 700 grams high-quality white bread flour, plus more for feeding starter and dusting work surfaces
• 300 grams high-quality whole-wheat flour, whole-grain rye flour, or spelt flour, or a combination
• 20 grams kosher salt or fine sea salt
• Rice flour, for dusting (I didn’t have this. It was fine.)
Day 1: Ready the starter
1. Feed your starter (refreshing). In the morning, three days before you plan to serve your bread (Friday morning, for example, for loaves on Sunday), pull your starter from the refrigerator and decant 20 grams of it into a clean, clear container. Return any remaining starter to the refrigerator for future use. Stir in 100 grams of room-temperature tap water until the starter is evenly dispersed, then stir in 100 grams of white flour until you have a smooth paste.
Why? The yeast and bacteria in your starter become sluggish in the cool environment of your refrigerator. They must be energized through successive feedings, a process called refreshing, to be active enough to raise the dough.
2. Cover the container, and let sit at room temperature until it has at least doubled in volume and its surface teems with sudsy bubbles, 10 to 12 hours, depending on your kitchen’s temperature.
3. Feed your starter a second time. Once the starter has doubled in size (the evening of the first day), discard all but 20 grams of starter. To the 20 grams of starter, add 100 grams of water, then mix and incorporate another 100 grams of white flour. Cover and set aside at room temperature to be used in your dough the next day.
Day 2: Mix and Rest Your Dough
The bulk of your work occurs on this day, so you’ll want to set aside some time to tend to your dough. Depending on environmental conditions, your dough may take anywhere from five to nine hours to finish its rises. It’s not active time, but you’ll want to stay close to keep an eye on it.
1. Mix together flour and water and let sit (autolyse). Early on the second day, weigh 700 grams of white bread flour and 300 grams of whole-wheat or whole-grain rye or spelt flour (or a blend) in a large mixing bowl. Mix to combine. Weigh out 750 grams of lukewarm tap water (about 90 degrees) and add to the flours. Mix gently with a clean hand or a flexible bench scraper until all the flours are hydrated and no dry spots remain. Cover with a damp dish towel, and let sit at least 30 minutes while you wait until your starter is ready (see Step 2).
Why? If starter is the life force of bread, then the stretchy strands known as gluten are its backbone. When two proteins in flour come into contact with water, gluten forms a network inside the dough, trapping the gas produced by the yeast. To build lots of gluten from the get-go, bakers employ a technique known as autolyse, in which flour and water are mixed and left to rest, usually before adding the starter. During autolyse, gluten bonds form that create the basic structure of the dough. As little as 30 minutes of autolyse can be effective, but generally speaking a couple of hours is optimal. It will give your gluten a head start and decrease the amount of mixing down the line.
2. Make sure the starter is ready to use (perform a float test). When the sudsy bubbles on the surface of a starter form a dome and it appears on the verge of collapse, drop about a teaspoon of starter into a small bowl of room temperature water. If it floats, the starter is full of gas and ready to use (ripe). If it sinks, let it sit, checking every 30 minutes, until you see even more activity and then try the test again.
3. Combine the autolyse and starter. Add 200 grams of ripe starter to the bowl with the flour-water mixture. Pinching with your thumb, forefinger and middle finger on one hand and rotating the bowl with the other, mix until the starter is completely incorporated.
4. Assess texture and add salt. At this point, the dough should be wet but also extremely extensible (having the ability to stretch without snapping back). Sprinkle 20 grams salt and 20 grams of water across the dough, and pinch, as before, to incorporate. Cover with a damp towel and let sit for 10 minutes.
Why? Adding salt tightens the gluten network, so the dough will go from very extensible to more elastic (having the tendency to snap back after being stretched) and stringy.
5. Mix the dough. Uncover the dough. Slide a wet hand down along the inside of the bowl and underneath the dough. Grasp a handful and stretch it upward until you feel resistance, then fold it back onto the dough mass. Repeat this motion continuously for 10 minutes, rotating the bowl about 90 degrees each time. As you work the dough, it will progress from very slack and sticky to smoother and more elastic.
6. Check if the dough has built enough gluten (perform the windowpane test). After 10 minutes of mixing, pinch off a golf ball-size piece of dough and gently stretch it with your fingertips, working it both longer and wider until you have a thin, even membrane through which light can pass. If the dough tears before this point, continue to mix and check again every 10 minutes. (If you’re mixing for more than 20 minutes and the dough is not yet at this point, feel free to move on. Your bread will still turn out.) Use a flexible bench scraper to scrape dough out onto a clean surface. Rinse the bowl to remove any dried flour, then return the dough to the damp bowl.
Why? This will help determine if the dough has developed sufficient gluten to give it strength, which enables it to hold its shape.
7. Prepare for the dough’s first rise (bulk fermentation). Mark where the dough hits the side of the bowl with a piece of tape. Note the time, and the temperature of the dough. It should be 76 degrees to 80 degrees. Cover the dough with a damp towel and let sit for 60 minutes.
Why? Bulk fermentation is the period after the starter has been added during which the dough undergoes its first rise. The yeast and bacteria produce gas and flavor, so a longer fermentation will result in a more flavorful bread. If your dough is above or below the optimal 76- to 80-degree range, that’s fine, just note that it will accelerate or slow the bulk fermentation accordingly. If fermentation seems to be moving slowly, you can move your dough to a warmer place, like the inside of the oven with the oven light on.
8. Fold the dough. Using a wet hand and the same mixing motion as Step 5, but with a gentler touch to avoid knocking out any gas, perform four folds, making a full rotation of the bowl. Cover the bowl, wait 1 hour, then perform the same series of four folds. Cover and repeat every 60 minutes, until the dough feels pillowy and filled with air, which can take at least 3 hours and as many as 7. Each time you fold the dough, it should feel lighter and sit higher in the bowl.
Determining when bulk fermentation is complete can be difficult. The dough should more or less double in size — use the mark on the bowl as a reference — but that’s not a guarantee. You should see lots of bubbles on the surface and sides of the dough. “It’s like cream versus whipped cream,” said Avery Ruzicka, the baker and an owner of Manresa Bread in California. “You should be able to see that there’s volume to it.” Or as Ethan Pikas, of Cellar Door Provisions in Chicago, said, “It should feel very smooth and aerated. It will feel very alive.”
9. Shape dough for the first time (pre-shaping). Clear and lightly flour a work surface. Gently turn out the dough, letting its weight coax it out of the bowl and loosening the sides with the bench scraper. Divide the dough in half with the bench scraper. Using floured hands and working with one piece of dough at a time, gently pull all the edges of the dough toward the center to create a round, tidy packet. (The non-floured surface will readily stick to itself.) Use a bench scraper to turn the loose ball of dough over so it rests seam-side down. Cover with a clean towel and repeat with the second half of dough. Let both pieces of dough rest, covered, on the work surface for 20 minutes.
Why? Pre-shaping the dough guarantees uniform loaf size and helps to organize the gluten strands roughly into the final shape of the baked loaves. The following rest period relaxes the gluten and makes final shaping easier, leading to bread with a better overall rise.
10. Prepare the shaping baskets. As dough rests, line two baskets or mixing bowls with clean kitchen towels. Stir together a 50/50 mixture of white bread flour and rice flour. (Rice flour will prevent sticking.) Dust the interiors of the baskets generously with the 50/50 flour mixture. Set aside.
11. Shape the dough a last time (final shaping). Uncover one piece of dough and lightly dust the top with the 50/50 flour mixture. In one decisive motion, use the bench scraper to lift and turn the dough over floured-side down. Slide your fingertips beneath the dough and stretch it gently into a square shape.
Fold the left side of the dough inward toward the center, then fold the right side inward and overtop of the left fold. Starting at the end closest to you, roll the dough away from you into a bulky spiral.
Let the dough sit for a minute or two on its seam to help it seal, then use a bench scraper to lift up the dough and place it seam-side up in one of the prepared baskets. Lightly dust the exposed part of the dough with more of the 50/50 flour mixture, and cover with a kitchen towel. Repeat with the second piece of dough.
12. Let the shaped dough rise inside the baskets (proofing). Rest loaves at room temperature, checking on them periodically, until the surface of the dough has settled and the entire loaves have slightly increased in volume, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
13. Check if dough is proofed (the poke test). Press a floured finger about 1/2 inch into the dough. If the dough springs back immediately, it needs more time — check again every 20 minutes. But, if it springs back slowly and a slight impression remains, the dough is proofed.
14. Chill the dough. Once the dough passes the poke test, cover the baskets with plastic wrap and transfer to the refrigerator. Chill overnight and up to two days before baking. The longer the dough spends in the refrigerator, the tangier the final bread will taste.
Day 3: Bake
1. Prepare the oven. About an hour before baking, arrange a rack in the lower third of your oven and place a large, uncovered Dutch oven inside. Heat the oven to 500 degrees.
2. Prepare the dough. Remove one loaf from the refrigerator and uncover. Lightly dust the exposed dough with the 50/50 flour mixture, massaging it into the surface. Place a piece of parchment paper over the basket, making sure the parchment is longer and wider than the basket by several inches. Invert the loaf onto the parchment paper. Remove the basket, then slowly peel away the towel. Dust the rounded side of the dough with more of the 50/50 flour mixture, rubbing it into the surface to coat evenly.
3. Make a slash in the dough. Use a lame or a serrated knife to make a long, slightly off-center slash about 1/4-inch deep, angling the blade toward the midline of the loaf.
Why? Slashing the bread will help the bread expand predictably in the oven.
4. Bake the dough. Very carefully place the heated Dutch oven on the stovetop. Taking care not to touch the sides, use the parchment paper to lower the loaf into the Dutch oven. Cover and return it to the oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Then, carefully remove the lid and reduce the oven temperature to 450 degrees. Continue to bake the loaf uncovered until the surface is deeply browned all over, another 30 to 40 minutes. Remove the Dutch oven from the oven, and use tongs to help you pull out the loaf. Transfer the Dutch oven back to the oven, and set the oven temperature back to 500 degrees. Repeat the process with the second loaf of bread.
Why? The bread is baked covered in the beginning to trap stream, which helps the loaf expand and rise as much as possible.
5. Cut and serve! Allow the loaves to cool completely, for a few hours, before cutting into them. Whole loaves can be stored uncovered at room temperature for 1 day. Once cut, bread should be stored in paper bags at room temperature and will keep for 5 days or longer. After the second day, it benefits from light toasting.