Hello from an old/new baker in Sacramento
I've recently decided to throw myself back into bread baking after about a 25 year hiatus, and ran across this forum in the process of scouring the internet for information on sourdough baking. I tried making sourdough back in the day, but from those little pouches that you buy in tourist traps in SF and reconstitute, and never had even the slightest luck.
This time around I've found the internet is a fount of all sorts of information on any kind of baking you could possibly want, and I've gotten my own starter going very nicely from scratch with no trouble at all. It's a little over three weeks old now, and I baked my first loaf with it the middle of last week. For a first effort in decades I was pretty happy with it, it had great oven spring and decent sourdough flavor, but despite the spring was very heavy and close-textured. So I'm trying again this week with a different recipe... and it's very possible I've bitten off more than I can chew, but what the heck, right? It's all about trial and error.
I'm definitely suffering from some serious information overload, though. There's just so much out there on so many different techniques and styles and even when 2 people are making the same bread it's still almost all different. I'm hoping to get some tips from all you seasoned bakers around here. It seems like a great community of bakers with a wealth of information to share and a wonderful attitude towards this great hobby.
Hope to be around for a long time,
Jay
ETA: if anyone could recommend a favorite recipe or book on the subject that I might be able to grab at the library I'd really appreciate it. My husband has become disabled so money has become incredibly tight the last few years and buy specialty things like cookbooks just isn't an option anymore. It makes me incredibly grateful for the internet and all the information available on it, even if it does end up giving me a headache trying to sort through. The one book I've managed to hold onto over the years is Baking Bread, Old and New Traditions by Beth Hensperger, but it has nothing on sourdough, which is what I'd really like to focus on since it's my family's favorite.
there is a recipe section here and many folks give their recipe (formula) in their posts so you can get there without spending a great deal.
Look forward to your bakes and enjoy the journey
Leslie
I've spent the last few days eyebrow deep in the sourdough section here, there is so much good advice. Thanks so much for the welcome!
"if anyone could recommend a favorite recipe or book on the subject that I might be able to grab at the library ...."
Not sure what your library might have, but here are some suggestions, all of which contain information on sourdough as well as recipes:
The Bread Baker's Apprentice (by Peter Reinhart)
Bread (by Jeffrey Hamelman)
Flour Water Salt Yeast (by Ken Forkish)
Check your library and let me know whether you need additional suggestions.
Happy Baking.
I'm going to try and hit the library this weekend and see which of those I might be able to get my hands on through our system (and get my PIN# reset so I can search online at home). Thanks so much for the suggestions!
tips, recipes, constructive criticism -- the people here are wonderful. I only discovered them three months ago and am having a great time.
As I'm sure you will.
Best,
Carole
There's so much I've been lost just plowing through old posts the last few days, looking at all the glorious bread pictures and looking forward to being able to compare some day!
Thanks so much!
The Complete Book Of Bread, With a title like that who needs another book? Like you I go the library for all of my bread book reading . We have already paid for it and put them in an incredibly expensive mausoleum staffed by people with degrees in the library arts, So you don'[t need to pay for baking books again. But you don't need to ev en do that you can just read every post here and get a lifetime of experience in a couple of years. My granny said - read my National Geographic Mags, she had a collection that is now mine, and you won't need to go to college to get a degree in anything worth knowing. I suggest making the simple 1 2 3 formula until you can make it in your sleep and then you can make anything, Just type 1 2 3 into the search box and away you go. Baking bread should be cheap and it is!
Welcome and happy baking
I'm definitely going to try the 1 2 3 next, I got way ahead of myself with my second attempt and tried theperfectloaf.com's country sourdough with less levain & longer autolyse, and while it turned out MUCH better than I probably had any right to expect at my level of skill (or lack thereof) I definitely need to spend some time with much simpler recipes first and work my way back up, no matter how much my FIL wants me to repeat this last. It would have been better, I'm sure, if I hadn't relied on my husband to put it in the fridge for me to proof overnight... he removed the covers I'd put on the bowls they were in and the dough dried out and formed a skin by the time I found it in the morning which probably retarded the rise... and is also probably why I ended up with such a bizarre and unattractive crust. I assume, anyway. Still, the interior texture and flavor were decent, especially when I expected hockey pucks at that point....
Thanks so much for the welcome!
handmade loaf by Dan Lepard, The Bakers Apprentice by Peter Reinhardt, Artisan Bread by Maggie Glezer (who also has a fantastic book on Jewish baking) or all the above mentioned books....i dont know what its like where you live but here in Ireland our library will get us any book within the Irish library system even if they dont have it in their building...having said that all mine are secondhand on amazon...
We're part of a fairly decent library system here, so I have some hope there will be a fair number of bread books available *somewhere*, and they will send them to my local library if they're anywhere in the county. So fingers crossed and thanks for the suggestions!
who's also suffering from information overload -- there's so much out there! It's a great thing, but can be a bit overwhelming at times.
My bread-baking goals have to do with flavor + nutrition, so I'm especially interested in natural levain aka sourdough, and whole grains either freshly milled or sprouted, and being able to get a texture that will get my store-bought-bread-eating son to convert to my loaves for his sandwiches as well as buttered toast. Long-term goals, lol. He does like the flavors of the whole-grain breads I've been baking, and he does eat them, but the texture isn't what he wants, especially for his sandwiches.
In spite of the huge number of books and web sites out there, finding 100% whole grain sourdough recipes/formulas than don't either result in a somewhat dense loaf (which I don't mind myself, but... my son) or use "vital" wheat gluten, and additive I'd rather avoid, is difficult.
Since I've been reading a lot, I'll share what I've come across that has some focus on sourdough.
I'm starting a starter with the method described in "Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads" (he describes a different approach, for a non-whole-wheat starter, in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice 15th Anniversary Edition"), and that is proceeding well, and I like and have had success with his recipes, but his books seem to have fewer sourdough recipes than I'd hoped.
If your library has "Bread Science" by Emily Buehler, I'm finding it an interesting read. I think she has a formula or two further on in the book, but I haven't got that far yet. If you like rye breads, "The Rye Baker: Classic Breads from Europe and America" by Stanley Ginsberg has some fantastic-looking recipes, many of which use sourdough, that I plan to try once I've gained a bit more experience. There is a new book called "The Sourdough School" that I've started reading; some of the nutritional information in it is oversimplified to the point of not actually being correct, but it's possible that the bread-baking information is more accurate. I also plan to read "The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast" by Caleb Warnock and Melissa Richardson, and someone on this forum recommended that I try a recipe from Ken Forkish's "Flour Water Salt Yeast", which I do plan to do.
Others here have vastly more experience and I'm sure can offer more wisdom. Good luck and have fun with your bread-baking journey!
Fran
I've been following the conversation on your intro thread, and you are clearly way ahead of me in the art and science of it. I'm pretty much just at the 'decided I wanted to try it again on a whim and found a starter recipe on allrecipes.com. I didn't get serious about looking up anything beyond the very basics until a few days in when my starter was going great guns and I felt a sudden surge of YES, I CAN ACTUALLY DO THIS. I'm probably going to stick to mostly white or only partial whole wheat sourdoughs, since that's what my family's taste and my budget run to. I get all my baking supplies in the bulk section of our local discount market, but I figure it's still going to be much better (and hopefully cheaper) than storebought, and will satisfy my urge to take care of my family with few resources for doing that. My MIL actually bought me a little batard shaped banneton, which was super sweet and supportive of her.
I'm definitely going to try and get hold of Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast since that seems to be so highly recommended. Thanks so much for the thoughts and encouragement, I hope your own quest goes well!
I seriously doubt I'm ahead of you in terms of actually making a good loaf of sourdough bread, although I'm going to try again today, with a 50% whole wheat recipe by Trevor J Wilson, which I found here: http://www.breadwerx.com/make-50-whole-wheat-sourdough-video/
I tend to be one of those people who likes to read up a lot on whatever it is that I'm doing, but until this time around, I hadn't really taken that approach with baking bread. It's not as challenging when baking pan loaves with commercial yeast, especially when I had a bread machine that worked. But this is much more fun. I like the challenge of trying to to a great 100% whole grain sourdough, even if, at this point, I'm slowly working up to that.
Have you been able to attempt another bake yet?
Thanks so much everyone,I really appreciate the welcome and information. I've looked up the 1 2 3 sourdough recipe and will definitely be trying that next, I bit off more than I could chew as a newbie with this high hydration recipe I'm using and I'm trying to get some more rise out of it with a further proof in the oven, b/c the 12 hours in the fridge hasn't yielded much of anything, but it was really active and did well in its batch fermentation. I think I just don't have the skill or experience to have handled it properly and I need to go back to the very beginning recipes and work on those for a while first.
I'm definitely going to check my library for the recommended books (I figured having specific recommendations will hopefully save me from hopelessly outdated books that haven't been weeded from the shelves yet) and work on a greater understanding of the whole process from beginning to end. At least my starters are both definitely active and happy, and I'm going to make waffles for dinner with the discard tonight.
Thanks again,
Jay