I've been wanting to bake sourdough bread for a long time. I even bookmarked various posts from @akipponn,@oceanbee and @fermentedphil a long time ago. The problem with sourdough baking, as I understand it, is you have to maintain your sourdough starter regularly. With me going away quite often, I thought that would be a little difficult. This year I finally decided to explore the sourdough world in more detail and I think I can work around it. I started two weeks ago to start my sourdough starter. People like to name their starter as it has a life of it's own and can live on for decades if looked after well. Mine is called Daisy, if you're a Downton Abbey fan you will know why, otherwise it doesn't matter.
I followed a recipe I found on the internet which says the starter is ready to be used in 7 days. Fantastic, I'll be a sourdough baker in a week's time. Despite following instructions to the dot, by day 6, my Daisy was still a mix of flour and water. I decided to follow another recipe, and Daisy started to change. I let her mature for one more week before I started to bake.
Here's Daisy yesterday, she's come a long way from a week ago.
There are a plethora of sourdough recipes out there, each slightly different. After reading for two days, I got the gist of things. Since they all said everything depends on your environment, your starter, and the flour used etc, I had to use the little normal bread baking experience I have and wing everything else.
I used a standard recipe for beginners, mixing 500g of flour, 375g water, 60g starter and 10g salt. As soon as I mixed all the ingredients together I knew something was wrong. I forgot I had wholemeal flour that absorbs a lot of water, making the dough quite dry. Not ideal for a newbie baker. I added a bit more water and forged ahead.
Next was the part I was most looking forward to - stretch and fold 4 times every half an hour. It was very therapeutic watching YouTube videos, seeing the dough stretching and hanging and gradually becoming smoother and tighter. My dough didn't quite have that effect due to the flour used. But it did develop.
The bulk fermentation is the most difficult part even though you don't have to do anything. They say it takes between 4 to 8 hours depending on temperature. There should be a dome, grow by 70-100%, have some bubbles, and the edge of the dough should start to come away from the bowl. That's a lot of stuff going on. This is where the artisan part comes in - knowing when bulk fermentation is finished.
I stopped at 7 hours.
I tipped my dough out to shape. It came out like how I saw in the videos, bubbles in the dough and parts clinging to the base as it slowly fell onto my worktop. The texture felt good and I could gently stretch it to a rectangle. That was a good sign, I think.
The dough goes in the fridge for cold fermentation next. That's allows it to develop flavour and texture slowly. It can take anything from overnight to 3 days, which is great, you can bake at a time it suits you. Mine was in the fridge for 18 hours, and I was surprised to see a noticeable rise, which I read wasn't supposed to happen.
The last thing to do is to score the dough before bake. That allows the bread to rise nicely and not burst into an ugly monster.
Finally, after over 30 hours preparation and 50 minutes baking time, my first sourdough was out of the oven. It was quite brown on the outside due to the flour used, so that's fine. There was no ear, a sign of a well baked sourdough. When I pressed it, the crust sounded crunchy and the bread was quite bouncy. Good and bad signs there.
I waited patiently for another hour before I cut open my sourdough, the moment of truth...
Despite being nice and bouncy, the bread was on the doughy side. I don't know if this is due to using 100% wholemeal flour, over hydration, under proofing, under baking, all or some of these issues or something else. That said, I think it still tasted delicious with some butter 😊
Sourdough genesis down. Better ones to come (hopefully).
Any advise from bakers, and comments in general is most welcome.