1980s sourdough recipe was easier than today's recipes
Back in the 80s and 90s, I had a sourdough starter and recipe that I got from my mother, who got it from a friend, who...
I had young children at that time, and I baked three loaves and one something else (doughnuts, rolls, etc.) at least once a week. It made great bread -- a sourdough tang and very slightly sweet, with a sturdy but light texture. Great for sandwiches and toast and appreciated by kids and adults alike. I never messed around much with the recipe and method -- it was everyday food and darn good as it was.
Now, this starter and recipe was much easier than all the sourdough recipes floating around now. I am starting to care for a starter that someone gave me, and the guidance I find seems way more complicated than I remember the process to have been.
This is what I remember. I kept the starter in a quart Ball jar, loosely covered, in the fridge. The night before, I took it out, emptied the whole thing into a big bowl, and added some water, flour, and MAYBE some sugar.
The morning of, I poured about a cup back into the Ball jar, added flour, water, and, I am sure, also sugar. Back to the fridge.
The remainder of the starter I used for the 3-4 loaves of bread, which had salt, flour, scalded milk, butter, I think, and maybe sugar. I also added wheat germ and soy flour, but that was not in the original. Bread was done by suppertime.
The stored starter did its thing without interference in the fridge and was ready to use in the next 5-10 days. As I recall, when it came out of the fridge, it had some liquor on top, it had some undissolved sugar forming a layer above the rest of the starter, and was separated into layers. Looked unappetizing. Made delicious baked goods.
So, the kids grew and I started working more, so I stopped baking every week. I long ago lost the last of the saved-off starter to a freezer failure, and the recipe has disappeared, as has my mom, who gave it to me. I have googled a lot of sourdough pages, and nothing sounds very much like this process. Reading this text, it seems like I am hung up on the sugar and want to make a sweet bread. That's not really it.
My question is: Does this simple process ring a bell with anyone? No discarding any starter, no care and feeding until the night before, simple recipe for good country bread? I am going to try to recreate this process without killing off the starter I was given, but if anyone has any advice to help, I would be grateful.
Thank you,
Deb
If you look around this site you will see similar ideas and process. I have never discard a drop of starter myself. That idea of prepping what you need the night before has been put out as a "new" idea by several people with different names attached but they are all very similar. I am sure someone will post one of the titles for you if you don't find it.
Good luck, don't give up. Your memory is right and in my opinion a good track to take.
Thank you. I'll keep looking.
I actually recently read an article relating to this that talked about the trendiness of artisan bread as a kind of engineering project, popularized by “tech bros” like Chad Robertson. It’s really quite easy to make an edible, tasty loaf of bread but more and more people are striving towards a kind of scientific precision and perfection in their breads as opposed to a more relaxed attitude. I thought it was pretty interesting and while I definitely do not agree with everything it puts forth (I think the author is unnecessarily harsh and political towards this new trend), I’d say check it out if you want: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eater.com/platform/amp/2018/11/19/18099127/bread-silicon-valley-sourdough-tech-bros-tartine-chad-robertson
Good article -- thanks! I am an engineer and have been known to create spreadsheets of recipe variations myself, but in general, I enjoy baking bread because of, not in spite of, its simplicity. Give me a method that works the first time or two, and I will be loyal to it.
I am nostalgic for my lost method. It worked for me for many years, and I'd like to recreate it now for comfort. But, experimentation is probably how I will find my way back to my happy place.
I have seen that method for sourdough. I believe it derives fro the 60's when sourdough became trendy. All the usual suspects published recipes for bread which tended to be sweeter and enriched-sugar,butter,milk. True sourdough is usually a lean bread and that was not popular with the masses. I will look around but I would look for recipes from old cookbooks on sourdough.
Here are some links from Carl's site. Carl was the person that started selling dried starter to tourists back in the 60's in San Francisco. I found an original 40 yr old package,revived it and it is my main starter still 8 yrs later.
http://carlsfriends.net/OTbrochure.html
http://carlsfriends.net/
https://www.grandpacooks.com/recipes/carl-griffiths-1847-oregon-trail-sourdough-starter/
Another source: lots of different recipes but her bread is lean. She replenishes her starter with sugar,tho.
https://www.almanac.com/content/sourdough-starters-and-recipes
I will look in some of my books-I have a lot of older books.
Thank you. I will look at the two links you posted. The second one looks hopeful -- most recipes don't use sugar, and I am looking for one that does.
I am sure you are right that this as a 60s kind of sourdough. After I posted the title, I thought to myself that I should have at least said "70s" since that was when my mom started baking it. I will plan to browse some used bookstores sometime in the future and see if I stumble on a contemporaneous version.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Welcome back to the bread-baking world.
Perhaps, what made it easier is that your mother had already "dialed in" the recipe, and you easily replicated the brand of flour, measuring process (scoop versus sift-and-spoon-it into the measuring cup) and everything else.
Nowadays, people don't learn in person, but from a book or online. Hence, an added dimension of complication for the new-generation beginning cook is to learn how to adjust/tweak/"dial in" the recipe to local conditions and local ingredients. (That seems to be the main commonality of most of the new users seeking help here.)
You had that "sweet spot" of what works handed to you, ... so perhaps you skipped that iterative adjustment/learning-on-your-own phase, and it appeared simple.
And even today, if one keeps the feeding ratio right, and a consistent/constant baking schedule/tempo, you only need to feed refrigerated starter once a week anyway.
(Does one absolutley need to build a starter into a levain first, or can you add starter directly? It all depends.)
Another factor is that the cooking we grew up with is, by the nature of how our brains are programmed, "the best".
And, perhaps there are many paths to the "sweet-spot"... as in: mechanical kneading in the mixer, kneading by hand, slap-and-folds, stretch-and-folds, coil-and-folds, no-knead.
Change the type or brand of flour.... and you might have to change the path to your sweet-spot.
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Once you do rediscover/re-invent the past formula, it will be for today's ingredients, your current oven, and your current location's tap water, etc. And once done, it will be "simple"/"easy" from that point on.
In essence, it never was "simple", it was merely "dialed in".
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It's kind of funny reading newbies here on TFL who move to a new house or city, or get a new oven, and they haven't grasped yet that minor changes in the environment/weather, the flour, the water, or the oven require them to make minor or major adjustments to either recipe or procedures. The water change issue can be entertaining to watch, because some people just can't mentally conceive of how "water" can be different in different locations.
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And welcome to TFL.
Thank you. Since my days of learning the bread are 40 years ago, I do not remember a single problem encountered! All was golden. you are right -- those golden days may have been slightly less shiny at the time. Nevertheless, I'll persevere. Also, editing to add that you are right on what a difference water can make. I have spent two 15-30 year periods with well water, and many shorter times with city water in various locations. City water and well water taste different and act differently.
using that bell jar method. All you need is to understand what went on in that starter. And that is not difficult. The starter was removed from the refrigerator and fed. It then fermented overnight. Part of this pre-ferment was returned to the jar and fed, the rest of the preferment went into dough for 4 loaves. With more details the recipe can be figured out.
Q. How runny was the starter when it came out of the fridge and how full was the pint or quart jar? Would you discribe it thicker than milk? A batter? The more detail the better. What kind of flour?
Q. How much flour went into the recipe? Milk? Salt? Do you remember any measurements, spoons, anything.
Did you happen to keep a measuring cup in the flour?
It would not be hard to adapt your current starter.
this is going to be fun...
actually easy... reverse engineer it! Take a recipe for 4 loaves and Add together. The flour and water needed for the chilled starter from the levain recipe. Then proceed....
Take this two loaf recipe for example from King Author flour. Multiply by 2, now all we need is a recipe for 2 cups of starter (or levain) and one cup of sourdough starter (or the amount you remember saving to feed and chill.) Subtract the flour and water needed to feed the refrigerator starter from the 2x below starter recipe. See where I'm coming from? Since the sourdough here is in grams, it is easy to multipy to get weights of both flour and water in the sourdough starter. (227g each) Do you have a scale? If not just say so and i will convert the grams back to cups.) ( ask any questions)
Sourdough for two loaves:
- 1 cup (227g) "fed" sourdough started
- 1-1/2 cups (340g) lukewarm water
- 5 cups (602g) all-purpose flour, divided
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2-1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
Instructions (Give me some thought time to change the following to your method.....). -Mini. Thanks.Wow, you are right. So, working backwards from your example recipe and answering your queries from the top down.
How runny was the starter when it came out of the fridge and how full was the pint or quart jar? Would you discribe it thicker than milk? A batter? The more detail the better. What kind of flour? ** Wide-mouth quart jar, half full, so two cups starter. Thick batter (not to be called "dough", really, but thicker than pancake batter) on the bottom, layer of sludgy sugar and liquid on the top. Dump the whole mess into a very large bowl and rinse the jar out with water (or potato water,) and mix into the starter. Probably two cups of water and also some flour. I do not remember if we had bread flour in the 80s? We probably did and I probably used it.
How much flour went into the recipe? Milk? Salt? Do you remember any measurements, spoons, anything. ** I don't remember how many cups of flour. And of course, it varied from batch to batch. The dough when finished kneading was fairly soft. You pinched a piece and it felt like your earlobe. It used scalded milk and butter. Pretty sure my mom used Crisco. Definitely salt. No added yeast.
I can play with a two-loaf recipe as you suggest to get closer to my goal. And I do use a scale, so don't bother to convert. I don't really want to make more than two loaves at a time, anyway, since it is a lot of work and I don't have a lot of people to feed! Back in the day, I mixed and kneaded by hand -- I don't have the energy of that young woman now, so I'll use a mixer.
The recipe above is pretty close to the timing of my fondly-remembered one. The difference is that I started with the whole jar of stored starter rather than a cup of fed starter, and then I fed it and left it out all night. It could be that that gets the batter to pretty much the same place. So then the total of all flour and water whenever added will be the dough (per the recipe) plus what goes back in the fridge. This makes a lot of sense.
Thanks for your good thoughts on this topic! You are right -- it will be fun.
Mini Oven is giving you the best advice available whenever she speaks, so pay close attention. But just so you don't think that a quart of starter is required, here is a little cartoon that attempts to illustrate the process at a smaller scale. This approach retains only about an ounce of starter and allows you to maintain it on your countertop at room temperature or refrigerate it for periods of a week or two. I find that with an ounce of refrigerated starter, I can seed a new refresh cycle with 3g and use the rest (about 26g) to initiate a batch of levain that will ferment overnight into as much as 750g. Depending on how much levain you need for your batch of bread, you can make quite a lot of bread in the morning. The technique of using the weight loss of the levain to judge its maturity has turned out to be quite a robust indicator.
half full for 4 loaves plus some to feed and store in the fridge. So if only two loaves are made, the starter will be one cup plus a little left over. The amount left over doesnt need to be a lot but contain enough acid to keep invaders out, that might be the role of the sugar. So the question arises, how much to keep?
It would most likely be half of the memory amount, one cup abouts. In summer a little less, in winter a little more as it ferments on the countertop overnight. So we downsize from a quart jar to a pint jar. My guess would be we keep around 1/4 a cup considering there will not be much duplicating going on in the fridge. It is mostly fed to keep it from overfermenting. (Here it would be important to know if the starter stood out for a while or went directly into the refrigerator. Stirred or not? And how cold that refrigerator was.) Food will roughly double (?) the amount of starter to 1/2cup (114g.)
When removed from the fridge to feed, the feeding needs to bring the total starter to be 1 1/4 c starter (227g x 1.25 = 284g) with eventually 1/4 cup being removed after it ferments. I will play with those amounts adding a little for what sticks to spoons, bowl, evaporation, etc. rounding up, naw, 15g sugar covers that) I'm thinking "outloud" here. Check: 114g slow cold starter, 85g water, 85g flour makes a little more than 284g starter gotta time this one. ( Interesting feed ratios, place to adjust a new starter for strength.). Not quite your discription of a cup (227g) of water but i think a cup of water would work too plus enough flour (tare the bowl befor adding flour) to make a soup or batter like you remember.
I need to recheck the two loaf starter amount. 227 g starter would be 114g flour 114g water but if the mixture is thicker, then a little more of the recipe flour would be needed and less water. ( The figures of 454g is errored doubled when it should read 227g each W & F for a four loaf recipe) (See, I do make mistakes! I corrected yesterdays post. I should not be figuring in my head right now but on paper with all the ingredients listed in colums and separated.) Changes can be made as the recipe goes along subtracting from the total flour, water, salt, sugar. Sugar looks like its headed for the starter in the fridge.
As a kid, 60-years ago, I was fascinated by the Paul Bunyan Stories of logging, and the sourdough used for bread, biscuits, and flapjacks that was powerful enough to be used to "break log jams". My mother had a good knowledge of baking traditions, so we made sourdough in a quart Ball canning jar. Flour (that has not been bleached/tempered) has all the yeast and bacteria in it necessary to make a good sourdough. The trick is to use the starter on a regular basis, so that the useful critters are encouraged, and the bad critters are discouraged.
If you are making SD flapjacks for breakfast, and SD bread for dinner every day, then a cup of flour to a cup of water, with the starter sitting on the counter will work very well. If you are baking once a week, then 8 oz of AP flour to 8 oz of water will make a starter that can be kept in the refrigerator for 6 days. When you do not have a cold place to put the starter, then make your starter as a ball of stiff dough, and it will keep on the counter for 6 days. (Scrape off the outside before using!). There is no one correct process for starter, there is only culturing the yeast and bacteria that you want, in the quantities that you need.
Flour with malt in it will allow the yeast and bacteria to grow and multiply faster. Whole wheat flour allows faster culturing. Fresh ground whole wheat allows very fast culturing. Sourdoughs based on rye flour are famous for their power. These days I mill fresh, whole wheat flour, that has sprouted grain (malt) and rye in it. I still think in terms of sourdough starter powerful enough to blow up log jams.
Building a starter using cumin or red onion forces several discard and feed cycles, which allows the starter to mature and have more power. Otherwise, the cumin/red onion or whatever is not needed.
If your favorite bakery will not give you a bit of their SD starter, you can buy a loaf of their bread, cut a heel off, and add it to water and flour to build a new starter that should include some of the yeast and bacteria that make their starter good. (The yeast and bacteria in their bread is likely all over their production facility and on their products. Once you are baking on a regular basis (with a excellent SD starter), the yeast and bacteria will spread all over your kitchen, which will make it much easier to rebuild a good starter, should you lose your starter.
(There is very little truth of any kind in the Paul Bunyan Stories. They were written as a promotion for a logging company circa 1910. By 1859, books on cooking for home makers already were recommending yeast rather than sourdough. While there are many routes to good sourdough, it may be work than yeast. When my mother was a young girl and baking for a large farm crew, she used yeast. I like both yeast and sourdough breads, so I bake what I like.)
Your starter story sounds like the german Hermann Teig. A somewhat sweet starter, fed with some milk and sougar. And this Hermann thing is a bit like the Amish friendship bread I think.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_friendship_bread
The starter you got years ago could have been one of this Amish bread starter.
Good luck with your journey to the past :)