How to make your Sourdough
I use these flours regularly. It is worth paying a little more for good quality flour.
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The yeast starter after feeding. This starter began it's life on March 2013!
The dough mixed together, ready for rising.
Sourdough starter
Your starter can be a little tricky to get going! Use rye flour and bottled water. You use bottled water for all your liquid needs (nothing must have any impurities in it). * See page on water. I use Doves Farm wholemeal Rye flour.
To make your starter use 60g of Rye or wholemeal flour (flour with nothing added) and 60g of bottled water. Mix together in a small Pyrex bowl and then cover with cling film. In 3 days time add another 40g of flour and 40g of bottled water and mix well and cover. In a few days/weeks your yeast starter should start bubbling. Sometimes the starter does not bubble. If it fails, start the process again. Once the yeast starts, store in the fridge and 'feed' once a week. To feed your yeast, scoop off the harder crust and add 40g of flour and 40g of bottled water. Mix well, seal with a new piece of cling film and store in the fridge.
* The yeast improves with age with some bakers keeping their yeast for decades!
Making your bread
Linseed Heaven
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Normally you would keep your starter in the fridge covered with cling film. 2 to 3 days before you make your bread, start feeding your starter twice a day.
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3 oz/85g whole linseed - toast these in a pan with a lid until they jump like popcorn or jumping beans
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Pour 240g of bottled water over the hot seeds.
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Set this mixture aside to cool while you prepare the first stage of the dough:
In your mixing bowl add together:
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4 oz/113g vigorous starter (fed the previous night)
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235g water
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16 oz/453g of good quality bread flour (Organic, Untreated and Unbleached)
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Mix these three ingredients together and expect the dough to be somewhat stiff but still sticky. Knead well for 5 minutes. Allow the dough to rise for 30 minutes. When the dough is this thick the gluten bonds well.
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After rising, combine the seed/water mixture and add:
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12g Kosher salt
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20g rapeseed oil
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10 oz /283g bread flour
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Mix the ingredients together and knead well for 6 minutes ( I knead the bread rather than the traditional method of folding, as I find this easier and I like the final results). Cover with a tea towel and allow to rise for 60 minutes.
* I double all these amounts and the quantity produces 2 x 2.5lb loaves and a smaller loaf, which I bake on a flat tray. With the recipe above you should have enough dough for one 2.5lb loaf and one small loaf.
It should be a moist dough that still is very easy to handle if you handle it correctly. You may need to add a small amount of water or flour if the dough is either too dry or too moist.
After the first rising knead the dough again for a good 6-10 minutes and cut off a portion of dough weighing 2.6lbs. Shape into your loaf and flour it well. Place this into a well greased 2.5lb loaf tin (I use Trex for greasing). Shape the remaining dough into a round shape and place on your flat tray. Cover both loaves with a tea towel and leave to rise (your loaves should double in bulk). This may take 6 - 9 hours or longer so start your bread making early in the morning. Prior to putting your loaves in the oven, pre-heat the oven for 20 minutes @ 200°C and place a small tray of water at the bottom of your oven (this creates steam, which helps produce a better loaf). Slash your loaves in a cross shape and bake your small loaf for 20 minutes and your large loaf for 30 minutes. At the end of the baking time remove the loaves and allow to cool on a wire tray covered with a tea towel. You can cut and eat or freeze your bread after at least 2 hours cooling.
What is
Sourdough?
(a potted history)
Sourdough bread is made by the fermentation of dough using naturally-occurring lactobacilli and yeast. Sourdough bread has a mildly sour taste not present in most breads made with baker's yeast and better inherent keeping qualities than other breads, due to the lactic acid produced by the lactobacilli.
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One of the oldest sourdough breads dates from 3700 BCE and was excavated in Switzerland, but the origin of sourdough fermentation likely relates to the origin of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent several thousand years earlier... Bread production relied on the use of sourdough as a leavening agent for most of human history; the use of baker's yeast as a leavening agent dates back less than 150 years.
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Bread made from 100 percent rye flour, popular in the northern half of Europe, is usually leavened with sourdough. Baker's yeast is not useful as a leavening agent for rye bread, as rye does not contain enough gluten.
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The sourdough tradition was carried into Alaska and the western Canadian territories during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. Conventional leavenings such as yeast and baking soda were much less reliable in the conditions faced by the prospectors. Experienced miners and other settlers frequently carried a pouch of starter either around their neck or on a belt; these were fiercely guarded to keep from freezing. However, freezing does not kill a sourdough starter; excessive heat does. Old hands came to be called "sourdoughs", a term that is still applied to any Alaskan old-timer.
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In English-speaking countries, where wheat-based breads predominate, sourdough is no longer the standard method for bread leavening. It was gradually replaced, first by the use of barm from beer making, then, after the confirmation of germ theory by Louis Pasteur, by cultured yeasts. Although sourdough bread was superseded in commercial bakeries in the 20th century, it has undergone a revival among artisan bakers.
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