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Things the Quarantine has Taught Me: Sourdough
At first I thought the whole sourdough fad was silly. Then I thought, why not be silly? A friend offered to mail me some dried starter with a "lineage", another friend jokingly asked that for a birthday present she'd like to have a sourdough culture named after her. After that, how could I not?
At first, I worried over the culture, keeping it out in room temperature, feeding it daily, making more things with the accumulating discard than I did with the culture itself. Eventually, by experiment, I figured out that the culture was perfectly happy sitting in a loosely-capped jar in the fridge and only being fed when taken out for walkies. Lately I've been baking around 1-2 times a month and it's perfectly happy.
At first, I used an elaborate process from the King Arthur website that involved a lot of steps, some interim refrigeration, and took about 3 days to go from first feed to finished bread. But through trial and error (and mostly trial, to be honest) I've come up with an optimum process for the batch size that works for me and goes from feed to bread in 24 hours.
Here's my method. It may or may not work for others.
Start in the evening. Mix 1 cup flour and 1 cup warm water in a medium sized bowl. Add the starter and mix. (I tend to keep about 1/4 cup, but the amount doesn't actually matter since you remove the same volume to put back in storage.) Either cover with a damp cloth or put it in a semi-insulated place (e.g., in the countertop convection oven) and let work overnight.
In the morning, remove the starter to return to the fridge. Add salt and olive oil to the dough and mix. Then measure out another cup of flour and add enough to make a kneadable dough. Actually stop when it's still a little sticky, put a bunch of flour on the kneading board, and knead, adding flour as necessary, until it's smooth and elastic (as the saying goes).
Use a little more olive oil to oil your bowl, turn the dough in it so it's oiled (against drying out) then return it to your rising location.
Any time during the (work) day when you end up in the kitchen, dump the dough onto your floured kneading board and knead it thoroughly. Return to the bowl, turning to oil the exterior again. Ideally, you'll have at least three kneading sessions.
After work is done, heat your oven to 425F and knead the dough one last time, shaping it in the process to whatever type of loaf you want. (If you feel adventurous, roll it into a thin rectangle and sprinkle with additives: cheese & herbs, walnuts & chopped olives, whatever you please. Then roll it into your loaf shape.) Slash the top. All my commercial recipes say to give it another rise at this point, but honestly I get just as good results going directly to the oven.
Bake for ca. 30 minutes or until browned and when it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. If you've done your dinner planning right, you'll have fresh hot bread for dinner. If not, you'll have it for dessert.
At first, I worried over the culture, keeping it out in room temperature, feeding it daily, making more things with the accumulating discard than I did with the culture itself. Eventually, by experiment, I figured out that the culture was perfectly happy sitting in a loosely-capped jar in the fridge and only being fed when taken out for walkies. Lately I've been baking around 1-2 times a month and it's perfectly happy.
At first, I used an elaborate process from the King Arthur website that involved a lot of steps, some interim refrigeration, and took about 3 days to go from first feed to finished bread. But through trial and error (and mostly trial, to be honest) I've come up with an optimum process for the batch size that works for me and goes from feed to bread in 24 hours.
Here's my method. It may or may not work for others.
Start in the evening. Mix 1 cup flour and 1 cup warm water in a medium sized bowl. Add the starter and mix. (I tend to keep about 1/4 cup, but the amount doesn't actually matter since you remove the same volume to put back in storage.) Either cover with a damp cloth or put it in a semi-insulated place (e.g., in the countertop convection oven) and let work overnight.
In the morning, remove the starter to return to the fridge. Add salt and olive oil to the dough and mix. Then measure out another cup of flour and add enough to make a kneadable dough. Actually stop when it's still a little sticky, put a bunch of flour on the kneading board, and knead, adding flour as necessary, until it's smooth and elastic (as the saying goes).
Use a little more olive oil to oil your bowl, turn the dough in it so it's oiled (against drying out) then return it to your rising location.
Any time during the (work) day when you end up in the kitchen, dump the dough onto your floured kneading board and knead it thoroughly. Return to the bowl, turning to oil the exterior again. Ideally, you'll have at least three kneading sessions.
After work is done, heat your oven to 425F and knead the dough one last time, shaping it in the process to whatever type of loaf you want. (If you feel adventurous, roll it into a thin rectangle and sprinkle with additives: cheese & herbs, walnuts & chopped olives, whatever you please. Then roll it into your loaf shape.) Slash the top. All my commercial recipes say to give it another rise at this point, but honestly I get just as good results going directly to the oven.
Bake for ca. 30 minutes or until browned and when it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. If you've done your dinner planning right, you'll have fresh hot bread for dinner. If not, you'll have it for dessert.
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