THE START OF MY JOURNEY WITH SOURDOUGH
I stumbled on this site almost a year ago. I love making bread and Sourdough is one of my favs. Yet, I have never made Sourdough. I decided a couple of weeks ago to make a starter. So, I gabbed my Joy of cooking cook book and found a recipe for "Sourdough Starter". The recipe called for comercial yeast. I come to find out the starter is not "traditional". If I am going to do something, I want to do it right. So back in my memory bank was the fresh loaf. Off I went......
After reading quite a bit on this site(and wasting a week on my so called starter), I grew another "baby". Just WW flour and water. My baby is on day 8 and is doing well. ( I also made a firm starter with baby tonight). Baby already has a nice sour flavor. I will leave baby out on the counter for about another week so I know she has a great sour taste. I plan on making my first REAL Sourdough with the firm starter tomorrow night and using the liquid starter on Saturday. Once I think I know what I am doing, I have some great ideas for adding goodies to my loaves. I cant wait to turn the oven on and not shut it off for the next couple days!
Happy Kneading,
Amanda
Comments
Amanda,
I went back to look at your original post to see what you started with. How is the sourdough coming along? The one thing new sd bakers run into is the frustrating slow rise and proof times compared to yeast mixes.
For me, The best way to deal with the longer ferment times is to start the mix in the evening and get it kneaded some and leave it on the counter overnight to ferment. With sourdough or natural levain, temperature is very important. A few degrees up or down will impact the activity of the culture. If you can find a warm but not hot place in the kitchen between 72-78F that will work for you. You don't want to go above 80F and below 72F the activity slows way down.
Keep feeding your starter in that temp range and watch for it doubling in less than 12 hours. With the winter cold upon us, I use the cabinet above the fridge with the door ajar to maintain the 76F when the kitchen is at 68 overnight. Let us know how it goes.
I suggest you start with a simple recipe and make it every day or often to get the feel for the process. If you need a recipe, let me know.
Eric
Eric,
Thank you for answering a big question that I have been pondering this week. It has finally gotten cooler here in FL with night time household temps in the high 60's to low 70's so I was considering leaving my mixed (sour) dough out overnight for it's first rise. I would then shape and proof the next morning. I think that is what you are saying that you do with success. If I interpreted your response wrong, could you let me know? Thanks.
Summer
Summer,
Every fall and every spring I have to remember to adjust for the change in house temp.. You can either use more starter OR a warmer room temp to arrive at a dough that has risen by double the next morning.
This is what I do.
I feed my starters in the evening after dinner usually. At that time I take 1 heaping Tablespoon of starter out of the now mature starter culture and place it in the bowl I'm mixing in. Then I remove all but about the same amount (1 large Tablespoon) from the mature culture and mix water and then flour to feed it. Now I go back to the mixing bowl and add the 325g of water and stir it up to a slurry, and add the 500g of flours and the salt. I mix it enough to form a shaggy mass and let it sit for the news to be over (about an hour). I then stretch and fold and do a slap and fold for a few minutes to be sure it is well incorporated. Cover tightly in a container that will allow a doubling and leave it on the counter overnight.
The next morning, I do a stretch and fold in the bowl or gently on the counter. You have to evaluate the gluten development now and decide if it needs an additional fold. I usually don't do any more if it's a mostly white flour (bread or AP). I leave the dough pre shaped in a ball and tighten the surface, leaving the ball seams down covered in the bowl or seams up in a basket, covered.
With sourdough, at 72-76F dough temperature, I proof for 45 minutes by the clock and bake it regardless of how much it has expanded. If your conditions are warmer or cooler you will need to adjust by 15 minutes or so one way or another. Also my starter is healthy and I know it will provide a good oven spring.
You can bake the above bread by starting with as little as a small teaspoon of starter, if the conditions are warm or if you want to slow down the process. This is one of the parts of baking with a natural levain that requires attention and learned experience. As you get to understand the relationship between the amount of inoculation (starter) and temperature you will be come a better baker. As long as you let the dough ferment the first time until double, you are assured of a thriving culture in the dough that will deliver a open crumb and delicious flavor.
Hope this helps.
Eric
First of all, thank you so much for your thorough response. You have provided some direction to my trial and error, which I know is part of the learning process.... and part of the fun!
My proportions are by the Reinhart BBA Basic Sourdough formula so that would be including a firm starter as 49.4% of the total flour using the baker's percentage. That is most likely more than your 1 tbsp. of starter per loaf, depending on the size of the loaf. Mine are about 1 1/2 lbs. Whatever the case, I have already started the process and have my firm starter mixed up and rising. I'll put it in the fridge after it doubles and I'll take it out sometime tomorrow evening to warm up and then I'll mix up my dough. Tomorrow night the low outside is supposed to be around 50 degrees meaning that in our house it should be around 67-68 since the cold front is not supposed to move in until tomorrow afternoon and the house will still have stored heat. Last winter, which was the first cold season that I had tried to make sourdough, I routinely left out shaped loaves to proof overnight using the Bertinet method (roughly the same proportion of starter in the final dough as Reinhart's) and it was tricky! Sometimes if it did not get cold enough the dough went all slack and ripped apart and when baked, became a pancake. I now figure that it was way over proofed, proving your point that small degrees of temperature change are very important.
I was really struck by your mention that, "As long as you let the dough ferment the first time until double, you are assured of a thriving culture in the dough that will deliver a open crumb and delicious flavor." That, to me, is a real revelation as I tend to fret the most during the proofing stage after kind of rushing through the first rise. I'm going to have to be more careful about making sure that my dough doubles the first time, as I'm not sure if I have really been that attentive during that phase.
I'll post my results in the "Artisan Baking" forum category sometime after Sunday afternoon. Thanks again for your tips!
Summer
Summer,
I have found that cutting the first rise short can lead to a problem of too much slow sourdough activity in the second rise. The final result is a loaf that takes too long to proof and then wants to explode when it hits the hot oven. Should the first rise go a bit too long the effect on the final sourdough loaf seems less detrimental than it is on a yeasted loaf.
Jeff
Jeff,
That is good to know and adds to my conviction that I've been skimping on the first rise at times. The plan this time around is to definitely let it take it's time. Last night I let the firm starter rise until it actually seemed to flatten a little (about 4 hours) before putting it in the fridge. I don't want to overdo it but I'm willing to push the limits for the sake of experimentation.
Summer