Tea & Cookies

They’ve begun trickling in—photos of the bread some of you’ve made as part of our Sourdough Challenge. I can’t tell you how delighted I have been to see them. I’m so pleased to think about new sourdough bakers out there.

Here is Charlotte’s bread, up in Canada. Isn’t it beautiful? “My first batch of starter went all wierd on me so I started again,” Charlotte reports. “I coddled it a bit more (made sure it was warm) as the temperature in our house fluctuates madly…I kept saying to myself, if they could do starter on the Oregon trail…”

I think the pioneer farmwives would be proud of you, Charlotte.

And here in Seattle, Meg turned out this gorgeous loaf (and a couple of others as well). You can read about her sourdough experiments. This loaf is round two out of three. I think Meg gets the prize for persistence.

My friend Marisa, who writes the fantastic Food in Jars blog, now has bread to go with all the great jams and pickles she makes. She said the first loaf came out flat as a pancake (though tasted fine for toast), but she’s clearly hit her stride now. This is a version of the King Arthur recipe with two cups of the flour swapped out for whole wheat.

Crawford turned in this beautiful sourdough made in a loaf pan. “I have tried for years to successfully ‘start’ some dough,” he wrote. “I tried water. I tried pineapple juice, whole wheat and plain unbleached flour… I coddled, nursed, bullied and praised my starter always to have it turn in to a blob. I had given up when my brother ran across your blog and sent it as an encouragement…and this morning I enjoyed two slices of delicious sourdough!” Congratulations, Crawford.

And in far off Bulgaria, Rumy wrote a whole blog post about her sourdough adventures that produced this lovely loaf. I only wish I could read Bulgarian so I could follow along. But the pictures are great, and the bread looks wonderful.

In New York, fellow writer Christine whipped up this sourdough series (she gets extra points for cool photography effects). This is another version of the King Arthur recipe, and the first loaf of bread Christine has ever baked. Impressive, no?

The other night, when I went over to my friend Rebekah’s house for dinner, there on her stove were two loaves of bread she had made (with the addition of some buckwheat flour, that made it lovely). She said she didn’t think it would turn out, because she neglected and didn’t really knead it, but we gobbled it down and I had more for breakfast this morning.

Finally, in Wisconsin, long time reader turned friend Lee used her new starter to make the Tartine bread recipe. “Last night I made some of the best bread I’ve ever had,” she reports. “To say I am thrilled would be an understatement.”

[I should point out that this is not the first loaf of bread that Lee has ever made, but it's the first with her very own starter. Her results got me interested in trying the Tartine recipe myself. I'll have a full report on that one soon.]

You guys are so cool. Three cheers for sourdough bakers!

And a big thanks to all who sent in photos.

I’ve had a few reports from folks having problems with their starter. Obviously I’m not in your kitchen and can’t tell you exactly what is happening, but I find it helpful to go back to the basics.

There are really three variables to consider.

Flour: Ideally organic, start with rye or whole wheat and switch to unbleached.

Water: Spring water, or start with pineapple juice if you want to play it super safe.

Environment: Keep things warm enough for the starter, find a protected nook or use your oven with the light on if your house is as cold as mine is.

And if you have any specific questions, send them in!

Happy baking.

Once you have a sourdough starter, you end up baking a lot. At least I have. I’m actually glad this month’s baking experiments are coming to an end, because bread and butter has become one of my main food groups. As enjoyable as this has been, it’s starting to make me feel doughy. I’m ready for a break.

But I wanted to send you off with some resources, so those of you who have been nurturing your starters can have some fun. Here are a few recipes, suggestions, and advice for making the most of your sourdough starter.

RECIPES

I’m pointing you in the direction of three recipes—each of which I’ve tried and can vouch for. The first I would consider a beginner recipe. It’s from the King Arthur Flour website, it’s pretty fail-proof, and makes a soft white sourdough loaf. It may take longer than the suggested time to rise, depending on how cold your kitchen is, but this is a reliable recipe.

One of the things that surprised me this month, is the discovery that many commercial bakeries use yeast in their sourdough bread, as does this recipe. To me it seems slightly beside the point of sourdough, which is meant to rise bread without commercial yeast, but it makes for a consistent product. If you’ve never made bread before, I would play it safe and start with this recipe.

[I should also point out that this bread would be taller if I hadn't let it rise for 4x the amount of time I should have (oops). But as I said, it's a resilient recipe. It still came out pillowy soft. This was the niecelets' favorite of the breads.]

This second recipe, for pain au levain, is the bread I make on a regular basis. It’s actually Pim’s recipe, but I’ve made it so often I no longer need to consult the measurements. It uses sourdough starter and a mixture of barley, spelt, and wheat flours, along with a bit of honey, and makes a dense, moist, flavorful bread. Pim makes this loaf as a no knead bread, and while that works fine, I like to knead it a bit and find it rises better for it. Be warned that this is an overnight sort of a recipe, so you’ll have to start the dough the night before you want to bake.

This bread is baked in a Dutch oven or cast iron pot, which mimics the higher heat of a wood-fired oven and makes for a lovely crust. This is the sort of bread you might buy from an artisanal bakery.

Consider this an intermediate recipe, reliant on use of a scale and Dutch oven. It would be a little more challenging for someone who hasn’t baked, but the payoff is worth it. My dough always ends up a bit wetter than Pim’s, so instead of lifting it into the pot as she does, I dump it onto a floured plate, then flip that into the pot. That’s why there’s flour on the top (see below).

This final recipe, for the crusty sourdough loaf below, comes from the website Wild Yeast and is considered an advanced recipe. It’s written for use of a stand mixer, but I did it by hand just to make sure it was possible. It makes for a very wet dough initially, and requires a lot of kneading, which I admit left me with sore wrists, but it yielded a fairly crusty loaf and good crumb. My starter hasn’t developed its full flavor yet, so the bread wasn’t as tangy as I’d like, but that will come with time.

The reason I recommend this recipe is because it provides an education along with it. You’ll learn about the stages of gluten development and the windowpane test, how to shape a loaf, and why steam is important in baking. Susan’s Wild Yeast blog is a great resource, as she links to explanations of bread technique and terms and videos to show you how to do things. I felt quite proud when I had completed this recipe, and learned a lot along the way. That said, I wouldn’t recommend this as a first recipe if you’ve never baked bread before. This is one to work up to.

EQUIPMENT

Of course you can bake bread with the very basics—a bowl, your hands, a flat surface to knead on—and I’m always wary of buying lots of specialized gear for a hobby you might not continue. That said, here are a few things I find helpful.

The shaker below contains flour, which I use to sprinkle on kneading surfaces and on my hands to keep the stickiness down when I knead or otherwise process bread dough. You don’t need a shaker, you can sprinkle with your hands, but the shaker gets a finer coverage and I am glad to have it, especially when my fingers are covered with sticky dough.

The bench scraper is also a nice little luxury, especially when working with a dough that is particularly wet. It allows you to scrape and fold over, when using your hands would make things mucky. Again, not essential, but useful.

What may be essential, if you want to expand your baking repertoire, is the purchase of a scale. I don’t know any serious home baker who doesn’t have one. I held out for a long time, but finally got a digital scale and now can’t imagine my kitchen life without it. So many bread recipes are written out only in weights, and it’s not a snobbish thing either. It’s hard to be accurate when working in volume measurements. If bread baking is something you’d like to experiment with, a scale will open up a much wider world to you.

And now, a word about crust. To get that crunchy and crackly crust so many of us love, you need to bake at high heat. A wood-fired oven is ideal, but how many of us have one of those? (I wish). Lacking a wood-fired or commercial, steam-injected oven, the rest of us improvise. Some people bake on pizza stones, some people use something called a cloche, which you can buy or make yourself using a terracotta garden pot, and some people bake in a cast iron pot or Dutch oven.

The Dutch oven method came into vogue with the publication of the no knead bread recipe in 2006. The heavy metal pot retains heat and creates the sort of crust most people didn’t know they were capable of producing at home. It set off a wildfire of Dutch oven baking.

But baking in a Dutch oven at high heat leads to some complications. The handles on the Le Creuset Dutch ovens melt in elevated temperatures. You can replace them with metal knobs from the hardware store, if you want to, or buy a metal knob from Le Creuset. Alternately you can look into the Staub pots, which come with metal knobs.

I bought a 5-quart Staub pot for bread baking and have been happy with it, but the high heat has caused some chipping along the edge, so be warned this might happen. It also gets grimed up from time to time, but it’s possible to scrub that off. It’s quickly become my favorite soup pot as well, replacing the allegiance I had to Le Creuset since childhood. Neither of these pots come cheap, though you can find sales, and they will last for lifetimes.

Finally, I have friends who bought a Lodge cast iron pot and this is a good and more affordable option. This version with a loop top can be found for about $35 in places like Target and Amazon, which is significantly less than Le Creuset or Staub. And you don’t have to worry about the enamel chipping on your expensive pot. I wish I had known about that option before I started baking with mine.

ADVICE

I’m certainly no bread baking expert, but I will share some things I’ve learned along the way.

• Bread, especially sourdough, is a living thing. It interacts with its environment and is influenced by it. If it’s cold, it will rise slower, and humidity levels will impact as well. I don’t stress too much about this any longer. When Pim’s pain au levain recipe takes three days to rise, when it only needs one day during the summer, I’m okay with this (many people say long and slow ferments are the key to better flavor). Sourdough baking requires a little going with the flow and adapting to the conditions around you.

• You can work bread baking into your life, just do it when it’s convenient. With the standard bread recipe I use, I mix the ingredients together at night and let them rise while I sleep. I knead it in the morning and put it aside again. If it’s ready to be kneaded and I don’t have time, I can stick it in the fridge, which slows down the process, and pull it out again when I’m ready. Don’t think you need to be on hand the entire time. Work it around your schedule and do it in the available time. It’s easier than you think.

• You may start resenting paying for bread from the bakery and store, when you can make something equally good at home for a fraction of the cost.

• You may start feeling maternal about your sourdough starter. You might end up naming it. Some people actually recommend this, on the assumption that you’re less likely to kill something you’ve named.

• I’m my experience, sourdough baking is actually pretty forgiving. I’ve yet to have a loaf utterly fail (my closest failure was with the top recipe that calls for yeast, which I let rise too long, but that was just cosmetic). Some of them have been a little appearance-challenged, nothing has actually failed.

• Even ugly bread tastes good. And your loaves will get better and prettier soon if you keep it up.

So go forth and bake. And send me any questions you might have (I may be doing a Q&A with a serious baker, so ask away). And I’d love it if you sent me photos of any bread you make with your starter. I’ve already received two of these and I can’t tell you how exciting that it. The loaves are beautiful!

Happy Baking. Have fun!

Okay, people. Let’s do this thing. Sourdough starter or bust!

As I wrote in my last post, sourdough bread gets its tang and lift from a starter of flour and water that provides a host for wild yeast and beneficial bacteria.

I’ve always been given my starters by other people (thanks, friends). But because some of you don’t have one, and because I was curious on how to make my own, I decided to start from the beginning. Flour and water, my own captured wild yeast.

Turns out there is a lot to learn about starters, and a lot of myths to dispel. What seems to be a simple process of mixing water and flour can turn complicated. People start talking about hydration levels and bacteria formation. I can see why sourdough seems intimidating. So let’s start at the beginning, with the explaining and the dispelling of myths.

First off: it turns out that we aren’t so much capturing wild yeast in the air. Maybe a little, but most of the yeast is already present in the flour. Because of this, it is recommended that you begin your starter with rye or whole-wheat flour. These flours include more of the outer bits of the grain, which are more likely to have yeasts on them.

You could try to use unbleached white flour, though it will have less chance of wild yeast. Don’t use bleached flour. The bleaching process removes most of the yeast.

So, for flour: rye or whole-wheat to start with; unbleached if you must; don’t use bleached. And you only need the rye or whole wheat flour for the first two feedings, so you can get just a bit from the bulk bins in you don’t already have any. Less than a cup of rye or whole-wheat will do the job.

Several books I read recommend stone-ground and organic flours, but I just used what I had in the cupboard.

Moving on from flour, let’s look at water.

I’ve always used tap water to feed my starters, and haven’t had any problem with it. One of the books I’ve read said if you don’t mind the taste of your tap water, it should be fine for your bread. However, depending on where you live, there may be things in the water that are not great for tender little starters. Most people recommend using spring or filtered water to start (bottled, from the store, you don’t need to go out and track down a spring). Don’t use distilled water.

The third part of the equation is environment. Any baker will tell you temperature is important. When it’s warm, bread rises faster. When it’s cold, bread rises more slowly.

To nurture a sourdough starter you need a warm spot. Some people have protected little corners behind the fridge or by a heater. You might want to hunt around and see if you have something like this. A thermometer is a good thing for temp checks. Depending on what book you read, they will give you different numbers, but somewhere between 70 and 80° F (21° to 26° C) seems to be a safe range.

Because my house is cold, I decided to keep my starter in the oven with the light turned on. This is pulling out the big guns, but it assured a consistent temperature. When I checked with the quick-read thermometer I use for meat, it was about 78° F (25.5°C).

From what I understand, you can successfully grow a starter in lower temperatures, but it will take longer. I’m not entirely sure I wanted to be that patient.

Okay, flour, water, temperature. All set?

Actually, things are slightly more complicated than that. Or they can be.

When I started reading about sourdough starters, I found some versions recommended using pineapple juice rather than water. I scoffed at this—I am sure my Eastern European ancestors were not using pineapple juice to start their sourdough back in the day.

But then I read a little more, including links posted by some readers here (thank you, Robyn). And it turns out there are some good reasons to consider pineapple juice.

When you make a starter of flour and water, you will see a big rise around the second day—it will start to bubble and you’ll feel excited and accomplished. After that things slow down and the starter sometimes gets stinky. This is where some people assume they have failed. The starter smells like garbage and isn’t expanding the way it did in the first few days.  A lot of people give up.

Thanks to the work of a baking microbiologist, we now know the early rise is not beneficial yeasts in action. The bubbles and the smell come from bacterial activity, a precursor to the yeast formation. If you wait it out the smell goes away and the yeasts kick in and all is good in the world (we hope). But imagine how many would-be sourdough bakers give up partway, thinking they’ve failed.

So I am no longer scoffing at the use of pineapple juice, which acidifies the mixture enough to prevent the growth of bacteria. You might want to give it a try. You won’t get the early exciting action, but you can also skip the foul smell and the slow period that makes people think they’ve failed.

I had already started using water when I discovered this, but if I were doing it over I might try pineapple juice instead (unsweetened, room temperature). Of course, if you’re prepared for the smell and the still period you can ride it out and not lose faith. With a little knowledge, either way is fine.

You can see some side-by-side results here.

Okay, let’s get started. The starter method I like the best is outlined in a post on The Fresh Loaf, a community website for bread bakers. It’s based on the method in Peter Reinhart’s respected and well-loved book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, but uses smaller measurements and thus less wasted flour.

Day One: 1/3 cup rye or whole-wheat flour; 1/4 cup bottled water or pineapple juice.

Mix the water/juice and flour in a glass bowl or container. It will look thick and glue-like. Mix completely so the flour is fully hydrated and cover loosely with a top (don’t seal) or with plastic wrap. Set it in your warm spot and let it rest twenty-four hours.

You might want to mark the level of the starter on the jar, so you can see if it expands.

Day Two: 1/4 cup unbleached or bread flour; 1/8 cup water or pineapple juice at room temperature.

Your starter shouldn’t look all that different on day two. It should still look like  kindergarten paste. Not too appealing. There may be some bubbles forming that you can see through the glass container, but it won’t have grown much in size. That comes next.

Mix in the water and the flour, stir well, and replace the cover. Mark the side again. Things will begin to get interesting soon.

Day Three: ¼ cup unbleached or bread flour; 1/8 cup water.

It’s alive! It’s alive! If you’re using water in your starter, this may be the day you begin to see action. As you can see from the mark above, the starter more than doubled in size. This is exciting.

You may also being to notice a smell. It may smell awful. Like garbage. Fear not. This putrid smell should go away.

If you are using pineapple juice, you should not notice much of a smell, but you might not have as much bubbling activity either. Trade-offs.

Stir up the starter, you should begin to see some webbing happening under the surface—spider web-like strings formed by the bubbling action. This is a good sign. If the top surface has dried, just break it up and stir it back in.

Once you’ve stirred it up, throw away half of the starter (estimate based on sight) and add the new flour and water. Even if you’ve been using pineapple juice up to this point, it’s time to switch to water. Mix completely and cover again.

There are more days to come, but I’ll leave you for now. Get your flour ready and give it a try. It might sound a little intimidating, but it’s easier than you think.

Are you with me? Sourdough or bust.

Any questions—leave them in the comments. And feel free to pipe up with your own experience. I know some of you are old hands with this stuff. Let’s share the knowledge.

One thing to note: if your starter is being kept at a cooler temperature, it may take longer for these changes to happen. Don’t lose faith. Perhaps just find a warmer spot.

Oh, people, people—you are so very good. Thank you for your enthusiasm about the cooking challenge, and all the great ideas! I think we’re set for a couple of years if we do them all, but yes, there will be soufflés and croissants and jam and sauerkraut and maybe even a pie crust or two.

But first, there will be sourdough bread.

It was sourdough bread that got me thinking about this cooking challenge. So many people said they wanted to learn—and heck, I know how to do it. In fact, I’ve been baking sourdough bread, almost once a week, since I came home with a sourdough starter from Quillisascut this past summer. So hey, let’s make some bread.

We should probably start off with some basic questions, though. Like: What is sourdough?

All bread is leavened with some type of yeast (otherwise it’d be crackers). The process of the yeast digesting sugars is what makes the air bubbles that cause the bread to rise. There are hundreds of different strains of yeast, but for our purposes there are two different types: commercial yeast and wild yeast.

For thousands of years, people baked with wild yeast. They made a paste of water and flour and this provided a good environment for the yeast to live and grow. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that an Austrian distillery owner created a commercial yeast product (yeast also being an important part of beer-making), which allowed for faster and more predictable baking. This was helpful as bread baking became industrial and they wanted to produce a consistent product. Commercial yeast allowed them to produce the same loaf on a set schedule (consider this the anti-artisanal bread movement).

So really, sourdough bread is our heritage (those of us who are descended from bread-eating countries). And if people were doing it for generations upon generations, without the benefit of digital scales and temperature gauges and all the scientific know-how, how hard can it really be?

The first step of making sourdough is simply to obtain a starter—this is the flour and water mixture that has fermented and is full of wild yeast and good bacteria. There are a couple of ways to do this.

The easiest, is to have someone give you some of theirs. This is the route I’ve gone the last two times. When I left California I was lucky enough to be given a starter by Dylan, and then again last summer, Giana at Quillisascut Farm gave me some of her starter.

If you have a friend who bakes sourdough and has a starter, you might want to ask them. It’s not an imposition, either. Sourdough bakers often discard part of their starter when they feed it, so you’re not asking for anything they need to hold onto. Most people will be happy to pass along a bit of theirs.

Another way to obtain a starter is to buy one. My first sourdough starter came from a packet of San Francisco sourdough I bought in a tourist shop and brought with me to Japan, because I desperately missed the bread I had grown up with. Unfortunately I hadn’t realized my Japanese apartment might not have an oven, and after making an awful lot of sourdough English muffins, using a fry pan, I eventually lost interest.

You can buy a packet of dried San Francisco sourdough starter, or you can order a starter from the King Arthur Flour Company. This is the second easiest way to obtain a starter (note: if you order a fresh starter it will need to be fed soon after it arrives, so make sure you are up to speed before you place your order.

The final way to obtain a sourdough starter is the original way—the way our ancestors did it—and that is to cultivate one using four and water. It might seem a little tricky, and there sure is a lot of confusing information out there (I’ve been wading through it the past two weeks), but really, gold rush miners and covered wagon pioneers and peasants throughout Europe who couldn’t read managed to create and keep sourdough starters. We should be able to do this, right?

Right. In fact, I currently have three of them in my kitchen. I’m doing trial runs to test out the different starter methods so I can bring you the best/easiest one.

Come back next time and I’ll tell you all about it.

Whee! Sourdough! Baking! Who’s on board?

Hello, hello. It’s a holiday today—one of those days not everyone gets off but still life seems to be working at half speed. It’s snowing in Seattle as well, which tends to shut down the city, even a little bit. But I thought I’d just pop in and tell you about something fun.

Do you remember the post last month when I asked you to tell me about your greatest cooking challenges—either the most ambitious thing you’ve made, or something big and intimidating that you want to try? I loved reading your answers, from multi-course meals to dreams of croissants.

But it was your cooking aspirations that got me thinking. Some of these things I know how to do, some of them I’d like to try as well. And then a breakthrough: why don’t we do it together? It’s always more fun that way.

So this is just to tell you that we’re going to be getting ambitious around here this year—and I’m hoping you’ll play along. I’m deep into research and experimentation for our first challenge and will tell you about it later this week.

This is how it’s going to work. I’ll select one challenge a month, based on your requests. I’ll tell you everything I know about the topic, and enlist the help of others as well, experts who know more than I do. Then, at the end of the month, anyone who wants to participate will make the dish.  If you tell me about your outcome—you can even send photos—I’ll share the results here on the site.

Because one thing I’ve learned: scary things are always easier when done together.

So let’s get cooking—and pipe up if there is anything you’d like to tackle this year: soufflé! Mayonnaise! Korean food! Cheese!

I’m excited. I think it’s going to be fun.