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Sourdough Bread Instructions

Recipe Link: http://sourdough.webzealots.com/

List of Ingredients










The Starter

Sourdough starter is made from water, flour and the wild yeast of the area. You may have heard a reference to "San Francisco" sourdough and thought that it was a generic term for all sourdoughs. That is not true! Each area of the country has it's own wild yeast and therefore each area has it's own flavor of sourdough.

The cultures that I have are from different areas: Red Sea, San Francisco, Austria, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, it is possible to catch and grow the local wild yeasts using a simple technique. I have used this to capture two different strains in the Austin area. If you fill a jar with equal parts of flour and water and cover it with a panty hose with a rubber band around the top of the jar and put it outside for a few days, it will start to bubble and you will have the local starter. If it smells really bad, or looks brown or just isn't appetizing, just through it away and start over.

I have found that the local yeasts and the Red Sea work the best for the Austin area and therefore I will be using this one in my examples. Each one has its own characteristics, flavor and timing.

You may also experiment with different types of flour for your starter to give a slightly different flavor. For example, a wheat flour used for the starter will give you a nuttier flavor. I have tried many different types of flour including soy, rice, potato and rye.

All you need to get going is a very small amount of starter. This will be enough to make all the bread you will ever need. This stuff multiplies fast! Carl used to tell me that when he used 20 gallons of starter (yes gallons), and to get ready for the next day's bread he would use only what was left on the sides of the barrel for his next day's batch.

To start your first bread, you will want to put your starter into a container with equal amounts of water and flour. The recipes use 2 cups of starter for four loaves, so if you want to make four loaves, you will use one cup flour and one cup water and all of your starter. Put this container in a warm place (85 degrees) for 6 - 12 hours depending on the amount of starter to four and water. When I do it, I use about a 1/2 cup of starter to 4 cups water and 4 cups flour. This takes about 8 hours to get going before you can make bread. I have found that if I do this the night before I want to make bread, when I get up in the morning it is perfect.

When finished store the starter in the fridge for as long as you like. You can only kill the yeast by starving it, so when you put it in the fridge, it goes into "Spore" mode, or if it dries out it will also spore. the only way to kill it is to keep it wet and warm. It will eventually starve to death. If you are worried about your starter, it is ok to add some flour and water every month or so. You may notice occasionally that a liquid will form on top of the starter. This is "Hooch" and is quite alcoholic. (Yes I tried it, but it is an acquired taste!) The miners in San Francisco used to drink it and some say they used to sleep with there starter jars to keep them warm at night. The hooch can be poured off the top and will not hurt anything. You can put a little in your bread if you want a more sour flavor, but be careful, don't put too much in. I wouldn't put in more than about a tablespoon in a 4 loaf batch.

I want to take this time to go through the stages of the starter. What Roger used to tell me was "Just watch!" What he meant was, if you don't know the cycles, you won't know when it is ready. This took me a lot of time to figure out and many of my first batches were ruined because I had waited either too long or too short a time.

When you first make the starter with equal amounts of flour and water, you will notice that it is a very thick batter. It is wet enough to be batter, but not so wet as pancake batter. You certainly couldn't make anything with it except maybe a fritter or something. When you pull your spoon through it, it will tug on the batter and will stick to the spoon as you pull it out.

After a few hours you will notice bubbles. After a few hours more, it will start to rise and the bubbles will get bigger and eventually the starter will rise to about 2 1/2 times the original amount. So if you want to judge it by the height of the rise, you can use this as a rough gage. Both Roger and Carl agree that at the point of the highest rise, is when you should use the starter. At this point, it will be very elastic and you will want to stir it down before you use it in the recipe.

If you wait to long, eventually it will fall and you will be left will a very wet batter with a lot of foam. It is ok to use the starter at this point, but you can get an even better rise out of it by adding a small amount of flour (about a cup to the four loaf recipe) and in about an hour or so it will be back up and ready to go. Many times I have made bread with the foam and it always works fine, but if you have the time, go ahead and add more flour and give it a chance to really get going.

Interesting note, Ed Wood, author of "World Soughdoughs from Antiquity" makes references in his book to the foam stage as fully activated. This sounds like he is saying the foam stage is the best stage to use the starter in. I am going to send him an email and see what he says. In the meantime, try them both and see which one works best!

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The Dough

Mix:

2 cups starter
2 tablespoons salt
4 cups water
As much flour as you need to make the dough elastic but not sticky

When I do a whole-wheat batch I usually use two cups whole-wheat flour and the rest white. You can use whatever ratio you want, but the white flour does serve a purpose. It provides the gluten for the dough and your bread will not rise correctly if there is no gluten. Some people like to add gluten (available at Whole Foods and other health food stores) to their whole-wheat bread in order to boost the sponginess of the bread. Carl used to make a completely wheat bread that was heavy but tasted wonderful!

I make mine in a standup mixer, but you don't need one. You could also do it in a bread machine, but you would have to adjust the times to accommodate the longer rise times of sourdough.

When I use the mixer, I just put all the wet ingredients in at once with the salt. (I know, salt isn't good for you, but when I first started making it I got quite a lecture on how the salt is part of the chemical process that inhibits the starter and gives you a better flavor because the longer the rise, the more sourdough flavor. It was quite a moment for me when after many had been rejected, I handed Carl a loaf and the only thing he had to say was "Not enough salt..." In my mind, I had made it!) I then add as much flour as needed to make a very wet dough and put the bowl in the machine using the dough hook, put on medium and keep adding flour until the dough is elastic but not sticky. It is very important that you put enough flour in. But if you put too much in, you can get a dry loaf. I don't measure any more but I think I use about 8 - 10 cups for the 4 loaf batch. When using the mixer, you will notice that the dough will start to stick to the bread hook and pull itself away from the sides of the bowl. At this point, you are very close. If the dough starts creeping up the center of the dough hook, add more flour. It means that the dough is too sticky. Once you get it to the right texture, put it on floured board.

If you want to make it in a large bowl, you will follow the same procedure above but when it gets too thick to stir with a spoon, turn it out on a floured board and knead in more flour until you get to the right texture. Remember, it should be elastic without being sticky.


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The Kneading

After turning the dough out on a floured board, you will want to knead the dough! This can be accomplished in a couple of ways. First let me explain a little about kneading. Kneading gives the bread the elasticity and lets it rise. Kneading is very important if you want a good loaf. Roger says knead the batch 100 times. I say knead it until smooth and then a few more. There have been times when I didn't knead at all and I still got a decent loaf, but not quite the beauties that I can get.

I used to hate making bread because of the kneading, but now after using the standup mixer, I realized that you can do it very effectively even without a mixer and with little work. One trick that Roger showed me was bashing the dough with a rolling pin. I use the French style pin with no bearings or handle. Just a big stick and beat the hell out of it. You can experiment but I have tried as few as 20 and as many as 200 for each batch of four loaves. What I found was about 50 was the optimum. If you do it by hand, about the same number of kneads will suffice, what I do is pull the dough towards me and then push down and forward with the palms of my hands and drag the dough across the counter away from me. This pulls the dough and stretches it.


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Second Rise

After kneading, the dough must rise for about 6 - 8 hours. Depending on the temperature and the starter used, you may see as many as 12 hours rise time. We call this the second rise because the starter is considered the first. Our method is a "three rise" method, so when you see sourdough bread that is labeled "three rise", it is the same method we are using.

Put the dough in a large container like a bowl or plastic tub. Some people like to oil the sides, but I don't anymore, you can put some flour in if you want but it really doesn't matter. The dough will come off the sides anyway you do it. I use a big tub that I got from Target and put two of these batches in at a time. I put a wet towel over the tub and then put the lid on tight. The humidity in the tub really makes a difference in the rise. I promise you will get much better results if you use this method!

The dough has risen enough when it "doubles in volume." This means when you put your finger in the dough, it leaves an indentation and doesn't spring back out. In my tub is gets pretty big, about half way up the sides and it looks like about two and a half the volume. What I have found is that if it goes too long here, the bread loses it's "oomph" and a smaller loaf will result. I have also found that going to the next step too early is much better than too late!


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Third Rise

When the dough has "doubled", you will turn it out on a large floured board and knead in about 1/2 cup of flour to feed it one more time before it's baking. It is very important that you do this step as the dough must not be too wet after this stage. It is equally important that not too much flour is added, or a smaller loaf will result. Once again the dough should be elastic without being sticky.If you are reaching this phase and your dough is consistently to wet, then you may be letting it rise too long, or you maybe starting this rise with dough that is too wet.

Cut the dough into four equal portions and form into a ball. Take the dough in your hands and turn the edges underneath and into the ball with your fingers. The idea here is to bring the wetter dough from the center of the ball to the outside. It also creates a tightens of the skin of the loaf and gives it a better shape when it rises. After forming the ball, cover generously with flour and put in a basket or in a baking tin or on a baking sheet or on sections of floured canvas.

Using a basket is the way I used to do it. I used "Large French Fry" baskets and some wicker baskets I got from Pier One. The idea here is that the bread rises better with more circulation. So use a basket with holes. Put a section of canvas on the board and pour some flour on the canvas and then spread it around with your hand. Roger used to warn me about too much flour but I have found that it is easier for me to put too much that to suffer the consequences of putting on to little. (more on that nightmare later) Put the floured canvas in the basket and put the ball of dough in the basket with the bottom side up. Put the baskets back in the tub if you are using it with the same wet towel and tight lid arrangement used in the second rise, or put them in a warm humid place to rise for about an hour.

If you are going to use a baking tin, then use a non-stick one and just put the loaf in. Usually you will want to put enough dough in so that about two thirds of the tin is full. Cover and let rise. After rising, it will be poking about the top of the tin about an inch or so.

If you want to use a baking sheet, put 2 loaves per sheet and put a layer of flour down on the sheet where the loaf will be. You can use cornmeal if you want to instead of flour. Then put the loaves on the sheet and cover and let rise.

They way I do it now is just by using some canvas cloth. If you want to use sections of cloth, you can just layout floured canvas and put the loaves on the canvas and cover and let rise. I use cloth that is about 18 inches by 10 inches. When the third rise is complete, I slide my hand under the loaves and flip them carefully onto the baking area.

If you want to make baguettes, roll the dough into 8 inch tubes and place on floured canvas and prop up next to each other between two bricks or in the tub. When I want to do it, I put all eight loaves right back into the tubs with the wet towel again with the tight lid and with just the canvas and the other loaves keeping each loaf in place.

All of the above will rise for about an hour with the Red Sea. Once again, the bread will about double in size. Also once again, it is much better to go a little early than too late. If you go too late, you will get a smaller loaf and the loaf will seem to sag. I will explain more on this later.


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The Baking Preparation

After the bread has risen the third time, it's almost time to bake! All that you need to do is put a few razor slits (I like using a bread knife now!) in them and possibly some sesame seeds (or poppie seads!).

Lets take the basket example first. I use pizza wires which are round and I can put four loaves on each. I can also barely fit 4 of the baguette loafs on a wire but they usually hang off just a little since a square pan would be ideal and I am using a circular one.


When I take the basket with the canvas and the bread, I imagine where it will go on the wire and then use my hand to support the loaf and turn the basket over and place it on to the wire. I put the four loaves as far apart as possible, but don't worry if they touch, it will still work. At this point if you didn't put enough flour on the canvas, the bread might stick to the canvas, be very careful when pulling off the stuck canvas and if you have too, pull across the loaf and not up.

If you used made baguettes or you used canvas for round loaves, pick up the loaf by the canvas and use the same technique to turn the loaf onto the wire.

If you used canvas like I do now, you will slide your hand under the canvas and hold the loaf in your hand. Imagine where it will go on the wire and flip it over. Be careful to place it where you want it the first time, because after it is placed on the wire, it is hard to move it around without indenting the loaf.


If you used a baking tin or sheet, you of course don't need to do anything but go to the next step.

Now take out your razor and cut three slits in the round loaf. One from the center of one side to another and then one more on each end to make three parallel lines in the loaf. If you are making baguettes, angle the cuts so you get about 4 cuts on the baguette. They must be about 1/2 inch deep and must be straight down. If the loaf is good, you will notice that it immediately starts expanding and looks very spongy. If the loaf has gone too far, you will have the cuts fall in on themselves and the loaves will seem to sag and cave in a little.

What I do next is use a spray bottle to spray water all over the loaf. You can use a basting brush or even wet towel if you don't have anything else. I do this for a couple reasons. First to soften the skin and second to help with the rise. Also, since I like to use more flour on the canvas, the water and the flour make a paste that hold the sesame seeds in place perfectly. Carl used to say to put just enough water on to keep it wet for 10 minutes.

Then put generous amounts of sesame seeds on the loaves if you want to. I like the taste and the texture. I also think it makes the loaf look wonderful!

A few things to notice about the loaves at this point. They should not appear as if they have "fallen" since you cut slits in them. You want to see a separation of the two sides of the slits. And ideally, you want to see more expansion since you cut the slits. If they fall in towards one another, or they just sit there and don't expand any further, you probably let the loaves rise too long.
You also want to have the loaf keep most of it's shape. In other words, if you started with a ball, then you want a ball. You don't want a pancake. If the loaf flattens out too much after putting it on the sheet, then you may have started with dough that was too wet when you made the loaves. Bake then anyway, but be prepared for a wider loaf than normal.


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The Baking

Place the loaves in a 450 degree oven with a wet towel on the inside of the door for about 15 minutes.

Then take the towel out and let bake for another 15 minutes. If your oven can keep a constant temperature, it should only take 30 minutes to bake.

You will know the loaf is ready when it has a brown crust and the bottom can be thumped "like a drum" as Roger says. The loaf can be sprayed with cold water if you want, which will tend to soften the crust after cooling.

Place the loaves on cooling racks for about 30 minutes and when they have cooled, you have sourdough!

Roger says you must let it cool for 30 minutes because it is still cooking when it is cooling. It is also evaporating more of its water and if you cut into a warm loaf you will notice it is slightly wet. Roger also says you must eat at least one loaf hot out of the oven, but of course he used to make 24 at a time in his brick oven in the backyard.


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Other Fun

Sourdough Pancakes

2 cups white flour
1 1/2 cups wheat flour
1/2 cup buckwheat (optional)
1/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 egg
2 cup starter
2-3 cups water (until batter is smooth but not too thick)

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and let stand for about an hour. It will be very bubbly and will make some of the lightest fluffy pancakes you ever had.

Sourdough Biscuits

3 cups white flour
1 cup wheat flour
4 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
5 forkfuls of shortening
about 1/2 cup starter mixed with 1/4 cup water

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Cut in the shortening and then with a spoon stir in the starter mixture. Only mix in enough of the starter mixture to allow the dough to start to cling together. When the dough starts to cling together and form a ball, turn out to a floured board and press into 1/2 - 3/4 inch thick layer.

Cut with a cookie cutter or cut into squares with a sharp knife. It is important to use a knife or cookie cutter to sharply cut the sides. This allows for a better rise of the biscuit.


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Other flavors of bread

after mixing in about half the flour in the above recipes, try something different!

5 tablespoons of chopped garlic

1/4 cup of chopped fresh oregano, rosemary, thyme, or any fresh green spice

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

3/4 cups chopped walnuts (it makes a purple loaf!)

1/2 cup of chopped jalepeños

1 cup of cooked 7 grain cereal

Just about anything else that you want to try!


Recipe