2013: a sourdough odyssey

Okay, so that may be a bit sweeping and dramatic--but the last few weeks have certainly been a delicious odyssey. Since my first foray into sourdough baking in December, I've baked four more batches, making incremental progress each time. The wonderful thing is, even when things go wrong, the bread has still tasted great.

My second attempt, a few days after the first, yielded a slightly more browned crust, thanks to a slower, longer rise. The loaves were soft and tasty, but still lacking a tangy sourdough flavor, so I went back to the sourdough blogs. Sourdough Home's "starter primer" in particular was quite helpful, as was Wild Yeast's post about raising a starter.

I learned I had been mistaken in thinking my starter wasn't the problem; a "starter" technically begins as a "culture", and then as it becomes healthy and established, it begins to develop the distinctive sour taste. Mine, only a few days old when I first used it, was far from being a starter--it was still a culture and as such, needed to be fed and tended until it could double itself in a twelve-hour period. Knowing that, I put off more baking to work on getting my starter going.

Rather than going back to the beginning and making an entirely new starter from scratch, I just took what I had out of the refrigerator (which is where the instructions in The Tightwad Gazette said to store it) and started feeding it per the instructions in Sourdough Home's starter primer. In order to keep it in the warm temperature range recommended by the primer, I stored it in the warmest place in my kitchen: on top of the fridge. Finally, at the beginning of this week, my starter was doubling itself every twelve hours, so I felt ready for another try.

I baked attempt #3 on Tuesday morning. At long last, sourdough flavor and a browned crust! I made a batard (oval loaf) and a boule (round loaf), but my dough ball, and later the loaves, developed a hardened "skin" during the rises. So for my fourth attempt, the next day, I baked a single loaf in a loaf pan and experimented with spritzing the towel that covered the dough with water while it rose. Still pretty dry, but getting closer.

Today was my fifth attempt. I spritzed the dough with vegetable oil during the first rise, covered it loosely with plastic wrap, and spritzed it with oil again after shaping it into a loaf and letting it rise a second time. This worked well to prevent the dried skin on the dough, although I think halving the recipe (which I did just for the sake of not having too much bread on hand) didn't make quite enough dough for the size of bread pan I used.

My latest loaf still tastes wonderful, though, and makes lovely sandwiches that my kids gobble up!

Tightwad tuesday: sourdough attempt #1

I finally acquired the third volume of the Tightwad Gazette, and have been enjoying it in sporadic bursts. About halfway through I found a recipe for sourdough bread (my favorite kind of bread, by the way) that the author assured her readers was not only inexpensive (less than 50 cents per loaf), but goof-proof.

Maybe not.

I carefully followed the instructions for creating starter, which my friend Carol, the bread guru, later explained to me was a "cheat" because yeast is actually one of the ingredients in the Tightwad Gazette recipe. Apparently "real" starter is made by cultivating the yeast that naturally occurs in flour or fruit, and has a mystique unto itself. Cheating aside, my starter wasn't the problem--but more on that later.

The initial rising happened overnight, per instructions, and this morning when I got up I punched the dough down and formed it into two baguettes.

My kitchen is cold and drafty, and especially so in winter, which makes it a hostile environment for yeast to proof. When I bake my regular wheat bread, I usually pre-heat the oven early, leave it open an inch or so, and let the bread rise on the stovetop. I figured the same would hold true for making sourdough, so for the second rising, I put the formed loaves on top of the stove while the oven pre-heated.

The recipe instructed that the loaves should rise about four hours before baking, but within two hours, mine were rising so quickly that they were joining at the side. So I popped them in the oven, and my house quickly filled with the most delicious aroma--even better than my whole wheat bread.

When the bread came out a half hour later I was slightly disappointed to see that the crust, while nice and chewy, was a rather anemic shade of beige. I whipped up a quick egg-white wash, brushed it on, and baked the loaves for another ten minutes, with only marginally improved results. The flavor, too, had a nice tang to it, but not the almost pungent flavor my tastebuds were anticipating.

One of the things I've discovered over the last few years of baking my own bread is that having a good recipe is only part of the equation for success. Methodology is often much more important than just the right ingredients in the right amounts. This is true in baking much moreso than cooking, since baking is more scientifically exacting, in that its success depends on the chemical reactions of the ingredients with their environment.

So I've done some research on a few bread blogs (blogs devoted to sourdough--who knew?) and I think the immediate fix is to not let the bread rise on the stove. Apparently if the dough rises too quickly, the distinctive sourdough flavor doesn't have time to develop AND the yeast consumes the natural sugars in the dough, which would otherwise carmelize into a nice, brown crust.

Besides sewing stockings and Christmas jammies, I think I've found my project for Christmas vacation: honing my sourdough skills. I see lots of French onion soup in my future...

Thanksgiving mulligan

I would have thought being sick once already this month had earned me a by, but no. A week ago Jimmy came down with a cold, and I followed suit within a few days. I was so sick I stayed home from Thanksgiving dinner at Jim's folks', since I didn't want to share the love with a sister-in-law who is due with twins the first week in December.

Thank goodness for Jim wanting to get a turkey of our own to cook so we could have leftovers (since his mom was making the bird this year). Now that I'm on the mend, we're having a little do-over feast of our own. I just took the pie out of the oven, and Jim's getting ready to drain the brine off the turkey and put it in.

My nose is still a bit stuffy, but I can smell the nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon... aaaahhh.

Five

Look what I found when I went back through a folder of drafts I had never posted! It's two and a half months late, but feast your eyes on the fabulous cake Jim decorated for Audrey. How-to here.

Back in a routine

In the two-and-a-half weeks since I last posted, we:

• started the school year (Jimmy in 4th grade, Audrey in Kindergarten)
• hosted our cousin Aidan for five days
• celebrated Audrey's birthday
• wore cowboy boots to the county fair
• kicked off soccer season
• went on a field trip to Thorp Mill
• stayed overnight with friends near Seattle
• returned to regular cub scout meetings

In between all these goings-on, I've been trying to find a new normal--staying on top of housework by having the kids help, carving out time to exercise and take care of myself, baby-proofing everything now that Joseph is walking (and yes, my kitchen is still gated off while I contemplate the daunting prospect of deep cleaning and locking down everything below three feet high)--all while figuring out the trick of homeschooling two kids at once.

Surprisingly, I've been feeling mostly successful at all of this. We've had the requisite amount of griping about piano practice and math worksheets, but overall, school has been fun and Jimmy's self-direction has allowed me to spend the time with Audrey that she needs. I've made a lot of progress on taming my short temper. My house has been cleaner more consistently than I can ever remember it being before. In the afternoons, I've even had a few hours between helping the kids with their chores and putting Joe down for naps to cross off a few extra projects on my to-do list like cleaning out closets and getting rid of baby gear we no longer need. Just yesterday I made up a triple batch of laundry soap and a batch of dishwasher detergent, too.

Today is bread day.

For a while now I've been wanting to stop purchasing store-bought bread, but I haven't been happy enough with how my own bread turned out, so I've been experimenting and tweaking my recipe and methodology. I got my original recipe for three whole wheat loaves from my mother-in-law, but found that my bread always seemed to turn out too dense and low. Through a lot of trial and error I've discovered a few things:

1. My kitchen is drafty, which means it is usually too cold for the yeast to grow, especially during winter and spring. I can mitigate this by turning on the oven and leaving it slightly open while the yeast is proofing to warm up the room.
2. Using exclusively whole-wheat flour (along with any additions like oats or flax) makes for very dense, heavy bread, which means that it won't rise as high and will be more crumbly. So now I use all-purpose flour for half of the flour content, and sometimes add in a bit of ground flax or oats--but a little goes a long way.
3. Recently I figured out that refined sugar, even in small quantities, aggravates my arthritis, so I've switched to using honey, which makes me hurt less and the bread more moist.
4. Our family eats about four loaves of bread a week, so if I wanted to bake only once a week, I would have to readjust my recipe.
5. My friend Carol, who used to have a bread business, told me that adding some baking powder helps get a bit more rise during baking, so I started doing that, too.
6. My kids love my bread. Both Jimmy and Audrey have said, "Mom, your bread is waaaaay better than bread from the store." The fact that Joe eats more of it than he throws on the floor is his own ringing endorsement.


Chicklegirl's Wheat Bread

5-1/3 cups warm water
1/3 cup honey
5 tablespoons active dry yeast (I buy the bags of Red Star brand at Costco, which cost only slightly more than a few packets purchased at the grocery store)
5 cups all-purpose flour
6-7 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax seeds or rolled oats (optional, exchange for 1/4 cup of the flour)
1/3 cup olive oil
5 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup vinegar
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Mix yeast, water and honey together in bowl of stand mixer. Proof for 15 minutes, until bubbly. Add other ingredients and mix together with two or three turns of the bread hook. Let rest for 10 minutes. Knead with bread hook for 10 minutes. Turn dough out of stand mixer bowl into larger metal bowl, then cover with a tea towel or cloth to rise until double (about 30 minutes, depending on if your kitchen is drafty--the warmer, the better and faster the dough will rise). Turn dough out onto lightly floured counter top and divide into four equal parts. Form parts into loaves and place in greased loaf pans. Let loaves rise until they round up above (but not overflow) the rims of the pans. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes. Makes 4 loaves.


Tonight, I'm trying a new recipe for peach jam made with honey.