Hello and welcome to my new feature: The Sourdough Diaries!
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that Mr. Stone Soup and I recently lost both our dogs. We lost our very elderly dog, Moxie, in October, and then very suddenly, we lost our beloved Jino just a couple of weeks ago.
These losses left me and Mr. Stone Soup not only devastated, but dogless for the first time in more than 32 years. I remarked to a friend that I was going to have to figure out what to do with the extra 2-3 hours per day I now had on my hands. She gave me a wry smile and said “better figure it out or they’ll disappear.”
Wise words.
Once it became increasingly obvious that I was perfectly capable of spending those hours moping, I decided instead to take up baking sourdough bread again.
I, like everyone else in the world, dabbled with sourdough during the pandemic, but once life got back to normal, I tossed my starter and reverted back to supermarket bread like an animal. I was never proud of this, but at that time, my normal activities kept me busy enough, so I didn’t think about it too much.
So, last week, armed with my newly liberated hours, I went to my favorite little mom and pop bakery and got some sourdough starter and went to town.
The first thing I did was feed my new starter with 50 grams of whole wheat flour, 50 grams of bread flour and 100 grams of water. The starter was strong and happy and produced a nice crop of active starter within a few hours. I made a loaf of sourdough the next day. It was not one of my more successful attempts:
It was far from terrible, but as you can see, it was quite heavy–clearly something had gone awry with the proofing. Also, it was bland–not particularly sour and lacked flavor.
I did some reading and learned a little more about sourdough–how to make sourdough starter more sour, when and how to add salt, how long to proof, what temperature to bake at, how to produce steam in your oven to get a crispy crust–and I could go on.
I started taking notes on my loaves–what worked, what didn’t work, troubleshooting issues, etc.–and viola! The Sourdough Diaries were born!
In this feature, I’ll share what kind of sourdough I’ve made, I’ll provide tips and information on what worked and what didn’t work and when I come up with a good recipe, I’ll share it.
And now a word about sourdough bread, and bread in general. Folks who got caught up in the pandemic sourdough bread craze could hardly have been more smug or condescending about their abilities surrounding this mystical power called baking bread. [Insert giant eye roll here.] I think one of the reasons I abandoned sourdough was because I got so tired of being on the receiving end of patronizing commentary on my attempts.
Here’s the thing: man has been making bread for more than 14,000 years. It’s not some kind of Kobayashi Maru and it doesn’t require any special incantations, meditations or magic. It takes time, some commitment, some patience; and it takes experimentation. And in the case of sourdough, a willingness to keep a starter alive; but trust me: you can do it. Once you have a good, strong starter, you’ll mostly feed it two-three times a week when you want to bake a loaf of bread.
And here’s a promise from me to you: I’m going to share what I learn and it won’t be served up with a side dish of smug commentary–just an honest accounting of what I tried and what I learned.
Look for my entries to start sometime next week.
Until then.
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
