Sourdough Demystified
Good morning! Happy Friday everyone! Here in the northeast we are getting a ton of snow, which means stay home and bake lots of goodies. This is the first of many posts, I am hoping to alternate between bakes and science.
TL;DR : Get out there find a recipe and bake!
Making sourdough bread can be daunting, sometimes when you read recipes it seems like you have to know some secret to make beautiful bread. I’m here to tell you there isn’t one but there are four basic things I believe you should know to make your sourdough baking easy.
These four things are:
1. Starter
2. Autolyse stage
3. Knead or fold
4. Feel
Starter
Let's talk about your starter and demystify the concept of keeping the yeast alive. You either got some from a friend ( which is totally fine ) or you made your own starter. The first step is to make sure your starter is strong! For me a good indication is when it's bubbly and doubles in size. You might ask how do I feed it? Isn't it tedious?
My starter schedule goes as follows:
Take out starter from the fridge at least one week before baking
Dump out the layer of hooch
1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup flour every 12 hours
Next day discard all but 4oz of the starter and repeat!
That's it, you'll have a healthy starter which is pretty much good to go in 3-4 days. Make sure the container is covered with a paper towel or a tea towel.
When you're done using the starter just store it in a tightly closed jar in the fridge for a month or so (if you're not baking that often)
Troubleshooting - what can go wrong with the starter
There isn’t much that can go wrong but you have to make sure you keep an eye out for a few things.
1. Is the starter too liquid-y? Just add a bit more flour than water for the next few feedings until it stiffens up again
2. Is the starter too stiff? Just add a bit more water than flour until it gets to a thicker creamy feel
3. Does your starter smell terrible? Like not the going kind of fermentation but rather a bit rancid? Then you got to throw it away and disinfect the jar (this one's a bit harder since if you are just beginning you might not be sure if it's good or bad)
4. Did the starter change color? Especially turn pinkish or red? Throw it out and disinfect your container.
Autolyse
Now the autolyse stage is an important step in bread baking ( a controversial one too sometimes).
In this stage what you are doing is mixing flour and water and letting enzymatic activity occur between the two ( for about 30 min ) to create better structure for your bread.
What makes this step confusing and controversial, is that sometimes recipes don't describe it OR they don't tell you some difficulties if you autolyse with all your flour and water.
From what I can tell you is 1. It's an important step which will make your bread much better 2. If you are using all your water and flour, you are going to have a baaaad time. So, I suggest either mixing all three at the beginning and give it a long rest 30-60 min or hold some of the water back and mix it in with starter after 30 min.
Knead or fold?
Next big question comes is, do you want to knead or fold your bread?
Well this is a harder one to answer but I can give you my preference. Throughout my baking years I have done both. For me folding has always given me great results and its pretty easy to do! North-south-east-west and twist.
The general rule that everyone should follow is that if you have a stiff dough like bagels kneading will be the best option while if you have a wet dough that you are trying to give time to absorb the liquid and build structure, folding works the best.
Feel
Now we get to one of the most important concepts in baking a good loaf (in my opinion). Feeling your dough and knowing what it should feel like, it is always a hard concept to get through words and pictures, I mean that’s how all of us see it who haven’t taken an actual baking course.
Sourdough bread (feels) no no the sourdough is not a sad boi
Let’s walk through a recipe I use
1. Mix the leaven, water, and flour (set aside salt and a little water)
a. As you can see I don’t necessarily do an autolyse stage but rather a long rest
b. At this stage the dough is a little sticky and shaggy, it will stick to your hands
2. Add the salt water (you don’t want to add the salt at the beginning because it will inhibit the yeast)
a. Salt water is added and now you pinch the dough and do your first stretch and fold
b. Here the dough feels wet and there is a bit of water in the container and can seem like it’s not going to absorb the 50 grams of water added
3. Next set of stretch and folds (30 min)
a. Stretch and fold! As you go through this set the dough will feel firmer but still a little wet
4. Another one
a. Keep doing stretch and fold every 30 min until the dough feels like it has absorbed the water and there is structure! As you stretch the dough you can feel like its holding itself together and it’s a bit more taut
5. Rest
a. After your last set of stretch and folds (for me it’s about 2-2 ½ hours) let the dough rest
Nora approved
6. Split the dough and proof
a. Here the dough feels like a soft pillow, holds its structure and has a little move to it. I think of it as a tempur-pedic pillow on a super hot day. This pretty much holds for the rest of the proofing period and eventually before baking it will feel airier.
Split into two and preshaped for final shaping
Scoring before the bake! always room for improvement
Now you might ask why haven’t I written out the recipe? Well because I use the recipe on https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-sourdough-bread-224367 and this makes wonderful bread, over the past ~5 years (I think) I have tweaked it and added somethings here and there and it makes for a good starting point.
Good Luck!
If you have any question or comments feel free to contact me.
