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Sourdough Success

One of my favorite baking blogs is Baker’s Banter, which is written by the fine folks up at King Arthur Flour. I know I am only one sentence in, but I am going to side track onto flour prices… and food prices in general. KA flour is definitely more expensive. I can get a 5lbs bag of Gold Medal AP flour for around $2.50 at our local and KA Bread flour goes for between $4 – $5. If you compare the two prices, the KA flour cost almost 200% more… the shock, the horror! However when you think about, $2 is not really that big a deal, especially since I usually buy one bag a month at most. I guess where I am going with this is that KA flour may seem like it costs lot more compared with the other bags on the shelf, but compared with all the money you it is only $2.  Not only do you get a better loaf of bread when you use a real bread flour like KA’s, but you are also supported a pretty cool, employee owned company. Heck, the extra $2 would be worth it just for the great blog they put together. When shopping, it is easy to put blinders on and compare price directly with similar objects on the shelf rather than to the overall purchases you make and the enjoyment you get from them. I get a lot more long term enjoyment out of a 5lbs bag of bread flour than I do from some crazy Starbucks Venti Iced Carmel thingy.

Before I get off this topic, there are a couple of other flour companies that are worth spending a few extra dollars on. Hodgson Mills is a family owned business with a full line of products. Near us they sell 5lbs bags of Hodgson Mills Rye flour for about $4, which seems like a good deal. Bob’s Red Mill is another great company. Around us you can a lot of different speciality flours and grains from them. They mostly come in 22oz bags. I have gotten their semolina flour for making pasta and breadsticks and buckwheat for making crepes. They are not the cheapest, but you usually cut these flours with some AP flour when you use them. Even better, Bob is a real person and decided to turn his company over to its employees instead of selling to private investors or taking it public.

As I was saying… King Arthur has a great baking blog. Some of their favorite recent posts include the April Fools day post on their baking disasters (good to see no one is perfect) and one with different panini ideas. As often the case with a good blog, one post leads to another and eventually you waste a couple hours. From the panini post, I went over to their post on sourdoughs and decided to give it a try. I have not had too much success with sourdoughs in the past, but the seemed equal ambivalent about sourdoughs, so I felt like I was taking like minded advice.

After starting my recent bread kick, I decided I might as well give sourdough another try. With sourdough you are essentially growing yeast to use in your bread rather than using commercial grown yeast. With commercial yeast, they select only the bacteria that helps the bread rise and dehydrate it to preserve it. With sourdough, you get the same rising yeast, but you also get some extra bacteria which add flavor, the sour tang, and help with texture and crust.

The grow these wild yeast bacteria, you create a sourdough starter. There are a lot of different approaches for this. The basic principal is that you leave a mixture of water and flour out which encourages naturally appearing yeast in the air and flour to grow. This growth is encourage be dumping out half the mixture each day and replacing it with fresh flour and water. If you want to skip this step you can just buy a starter from KA. I followed the method from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice:

Here are a couple of techniques on the web for creating your own starter:

Once you have a nice little colony of yeast established, you can let it dormant for a while in your fridge until you are ready to bake. About a day before you want to start baking you need to feed your starter to wake it back up again. The Baker’s Banter goes over how to do this here.

Now that you have a “fed” starter, you can bake some bread. Here are two recipes from Baker’s Banter. The first is a more mild bread that uses the sourdough for a little flavor, but uses commercial yeast to rise. The second is all sourdough and has a much longer rising time and much stronger taste.

The original recipes have pictures for each step, so check them out!

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Rustic Sourdough Bread

A richly flavored loaf that is not sour.

Baker’s Banter

Ingredients:

  • 5 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
  • 1 cup “fed” sourdough starter
  • 2 teaspons instant yeast
  • 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons salt

Directions:

  1. Spray the loaves with lukewarm water.
  2. Make two fairly deep horizontal slashes in each; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.
  3. Gently shape the dough into two oval loaves, and place them on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise until very puffy, about 1 hour. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425F.
  4. Gently divide the dough in half; it’ll deflate somewhat.
  5. Combine all of the ingredients, kneading to form a smooth dough.
  6. Allow the dough to rise, in a covered bowl, until it’s doubled in size, about 90 minutes.
  7. Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s a very deep golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool on a rack.

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Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread

This bread, with its mellow tang, is perfect for those who like their sourdough bread noticeably sour, but not mouth-puckeringly so. For extra-sour flavor, add 1/4 teaspoon sour salt (citric acid).

Baker’s Banter

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
  • 1/2 teaspoon to 5/8 teaspoon sour salt (citric acid), optional, for extra-sour bread
  • 5 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
  • 1 cup “fed” sourdough starter
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1 tablespoon sugar

Directions:

  1. Make two fairly deep horizontal slashes in each; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.
  2. Spray the loaves with lukewarm water.
  3. Gently divide the dough in half.
  4. Gently shape the dough into two oval loaves, and place them on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise until very puffy, about 2 to 4 hours. Don’t worry if the loaves spread more than they rise; they’ll pick up once they hit the oven’s heat. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425F.
  5. Allow the dough to rise in a covered bowl until it’s relaxed, smoothed out, and risen. Depending on the vigor of your starter, it may become REALLY puffy, as pictured; or it may just rise a bit. This can take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours. Understand this: sourdough bread (especially sourdough without added yeast) is as much art as science; everyone’s timetable will be different. So please allow yourself to go with the flow, and not treat this as an exact, to-the-minute process.
  6. Add the remaining ingredients, kneading to form a smooth dough.
  7. Combine the starter, water, and 3 cups of the flour. Beat vigorously.
  8. Cover, and let rest at room temperature for 4 hours. Refrigerate overnight, for about 12 hours.
  9. Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s a very deep golden brown. Remove it form the oven, and cool on a rack.

4 thoughts on “Sourdough Success

  1. Your recipe for the Extra Tangy Sourdough is BACKWARDS!!
    You’ve somehow mixed up the Steps in this published version of this Extra Tangy Sourdough!
    You show it first slashing it, dividing it and forming two loaves to let rise, THEN you show it rising in a covered bowl.
    That’s BACKWARDS!

  2. “As often the case with a good blog, one post leads to another and eventually you waste a couple hours…
    That’s certainly the case for me here at cookography. I could read and re-read everything here several times over.

  3. That’s a beautiful loaf of sourdough! I have to agree that KA’s flour does make a better bread.Like you said- extra 2 dollars well spent than getting the Starbucks coffee!

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