A couple of weeks ago I decided to make some sourdough bread. I have local flour, so I have been making mostly-local bread. By making sourdough starter I could eliminate the yeast and bake some true 100 mile loaves. It sounded so crazy it just might work. So I turned to my good friend Mr. Google and found a great intro to sourdough baking.
To start with you mix a cup of water and a cup of flour to make this sort of paste-like thing, which you leave on your countertop in a glass jar. 24 hours later you pour out half of the goo and add another 1/2 cup each of water and flour. You continue this process (called ‘feeding the sourdough’) every 24 hours until you have a bubbly, frothy, sourdough-smelling starter. Then you can put it in the fridge and feed it weekly, or use it bake some bread. I opted to bake bread.
To bake the bread you need to proof the starter, so you add 1 cup each of water and flour and wait for it to do its thing.
The sourdough starter
Flour and water added for proofing
Bubbles starting to form
Starter proofed and ready to go
At this point, you measure out however much of the starter you need, and put the rest in a glass jar, feed it, and refrigerate. This will be your starter for next time. Then you follow your recipe and make your bread. The whole process can take a long time, since sourdough rises much more slowly than yeast bread. Eventually, though, my bread was ready for its final rise. I decided I would try making a lovely, round loaf just like you see in the grocery store.
My first sourdough loaf, ready for its final rise
This is where it all went off the rails for me. Instead of rising, my loaf sort of spread out. I’m not sure if there was too much oil on the baking sheet, or if it was the recipe, or if there is some trick to making a round loaf. If you know the answer I would love to hear it. The net result, though, was my bread ended up more pancake-like than bread-like. I tried to salvage it by putting it into a baking dish, to no avail.
Deflated loaf in a baking dish
At this point, I decided that I needed to go back to basics for my second loaf. I was using 100% whole wheat flour for my sourdough, since my local flour is all whole wheat. I continued using the whole wheat for the starter, but I decided to use unbleached white flour when I mixed up the bread, as the recipe instructed. (Following the recipe? How novel!) I also decided to use a loaf pan. This time, I got a lovely loaf of bread. And it tasted great, to boot. Victory!
I couldn’t wait to sample the bread until after I got the picture
Have you ever baked sourdough? If so, please share your tips and tricks!
To me the important question is as yet unanswered: How did it taste??!! (I've baked bread, but never knew you could make sourdough….)
It tasted good, and not as sour as I expected. I'm making more again today.
It looks nice and dense, too!
years ago, I made all our bread for a while, like a year? most of it sourdough. My wonderment about your "flat" bread: was there enough flour in the dough? or, more explicitly–enough GLUTEN?my bread was never 100% whole wheat. now that I think of it, when I used whole wheat flour only for my first bread from that local flour (with yeast), it too was flat. I had the same problem. the second time, I used some white flour too, and was more intentional about beating it into gluten before I added the whole wheat (and cooked Red river cereal). that worked better.
Crazy — I had no idea you could make starter with just flour and water! And make bread with no yeast!
Fascinating. How did it taste?
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Thank you for sharing this Amber. I’ve made yeast breat and dinner rolls before – and this is a little more work but very interesting. When you were ‘growing’ the yeast, did you keep it out in the open i.e. on the counter or in the oven over 3-4 days? John’s website was great, I still have to read the Q&A’s. And yes, how did it taste?
I loooooove sourdough. You’re so resourceful. When I was in elementary school we had some muffin mix type thing that we mixed up and it lived in the refrigerator for weeks and we passed it from person and person and called it Herbert. I don’t remember how the baking part worked out.
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The only bread I eat is Sourdough with no yeast, and I'm pretty sure you can't make it with whole wheat flour – loved watching you try though! Love the 2nd round! Looks yummy
I’ve been trying to learn (via Youtube…very informative) on how to make home-made sourdough bread. I just haven’t tried yet, and so glad that someone DID, and blogged about it. Its so funny how similar we have gone through our motherhood-ery together.
I love to wear my babies
I love to Breastfeed
I bake my own bread (I even grind my own wheat, from local wheat farms)
I am a stay at home mom with 2 kids (5 & 1 yr)
and I’m sure a few other things that I’ve gone “Hey, Amber just tried this new thing that I’ve JUST been thinking about trying!!”
Way cool
Getting a round loaf is really tricky and it’s even trickier with sourdough. That’s a technique that seems to result in a great deal of floppiness of the dough. I can show you how to roll out and roll in and build structure, to get you closer to a self-sustaining round loaf, but yeah, it’s tricky.
I’ve had some luck working the oven angle, too. You start with a reeeeeally hot oven (like 450) and then turn the temp down to baking temp as soon as you put the bread in. Same as you do for meat.
Ultimately, though, I recommend sticking with the loaf pans.
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Yum!
I remember we had a neighbor who would bake bread in big empty coffee cans, so she had cylinder-shaped loaves. Tasty, and kind of fun in disc shaped slices.
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WELL DONE! And I’m very, very envious: I’ve never been able to make sourdough! I think my house is too cold in winter (and too hot in summer, but in summer I bake bread less frequently, and a starter wouldn’t make sense). I don’t use loaf pans, I just simply don’t like rectangular bread as much! Because I use whole wheat flower to which I add seeds and grains, the dough doesn’t tend to spread out too much. Still, I first do most of the rising in a bowl, then I shape it and give it some additional time to rise (about 20-30 mins, but it depends on the room temperature), and then I bake.
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I baked sourdough when I was a kid with my mom but haven’t tried it for years. I love sourdough. Thank you gold rush for creating such awesome bread! What I’m really interested in was that you used local flour! I read back through some of your posts to find out where you got it from and I’m going to go check them out. I have been trying to eat locally more and more (I even signed up with a local farm to get produce direct from them next year) but up until now I thought flour was something we could only get from far away. Agassiz is kind of far away from me in Delta but still that’s cool.
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Where do you get your local flour? I think I want to start using local flour as well.
Thanks!!