Sourdough!
Making beautiful loaves from a natural starter is incredibly gratifying. Baking has become a process integral to my life. It is a creative and scientific outlet that makes me feel incredibly self-sufficient. Bread is an ancient material, and has been a huge part of the identity of cultures all over the world. It is an essential building block of life. Sourdough is a great teacher, you will learn humility and experience failure but when you succeed is the most gratifying thing in the world. You begin with flour, water, and salt and end up with a hearty and nutritious loaf, far better than you could find in the average grocery store. The process, seemingly long and complex, becomes second nature after a few rounds, so do not be scared off by the length of the recipe and description of methods used. Also do not be disappointed if your first loaves are not perfect! For the first few months my loaves came out in a crazy range of pancakes and misshapen lumps, but they were still tasty! Here I am attaching a very condensed version of my method that usually goes on for about six pages and really explains the process in full detail. This should provide some basic info but you can contact me though Instagram @greasigraci or shoot me an email at camerongfossett@gmail.com to receive a full in-depth PDF! I am in the process of putting together kits that include a dried starter (that you can rehydrate good as new), a full in-depth description of the recipe and methods used, pdfs of stencils you can cut out to get beautiful designs on your loaves, and ways to play around and make some of your very own bread masks! I am also offering zoom or facetime meeting so I can walk you through the process in person!
Tools
Bench knife (can use just regular knife), rubber spatula, dutch oven (or 2 pans, one deep enough to be a makeshift lid), big bowls for mixing (I like metal for mixing in and then glass or plastic for rinsing so I can watch the gluten structures grow), and a scale!
Ingredients
The basic bread recipe is: 200 grams leaven, 1000 grams flour (900 white 100 wheat but this can flux), 750 grams water, and 25 grams salt.
Since all the measurements are in grams I use a small scale to weigh things out. Fear not if you don’t have one! A cup is equal to just about 240 grams and I have used this way of measuring many times, it involves a little math but works perfectly!
Leaven
· The night before you want to make bread, you make the leaven. I'm sure to have enough leaven for the bread with some left over to continue keeping the starter for the future. The book recipe makes 2 loaves.
· Discard all but 1 TBL of the starter and feed it equal proportions of flour + water, the flour split evenly between wheat + white.
· To make 2 loaves I feed 75 grams of the white + 50 grams of the wheat (125 grams total), and 125 grams of warm water.
· So you have your 1 TBL starter plus a total of feeding 250 grams of combined water and flour, split evenly (125 grams ea.). Either you feed it in the morning and make bread about 8 hours later, or you feed it before bed and make bread in the morning.
Once it's ready, it's bubbly and really looks quite different and ready ("drop test" -- you can drop a small amount of the developed starter into warm water and if it floats it is ready, though I have made very successful loaves with starter that looked ready but never floated... Usually it does float, though).
Mixing & Folding the Dough
· To make the loaves with the developed starter, you separately mix up your 1000 grams of chosen flours, then weigh all the water you will be using except for 50 grams (you keep this to add a little later with the salt).
· Add the starter first to the water and stir gently to disperse it.
· Then add the water/ starter to the dry flours, mix well with your hands or a wooden spoon, and let it sit for a half an hour before adding the 20 grams of salt and the remaining 50 grams of water (or whatever you think it needs to feel right, which you get a sense of more and more with time + experimentation).
· Let it sit for 1/2 hour, and then begin a series of "stretch and folds", every 1/2 hour reaching into the bowl and at each of the four directions, starting with E and ending with N, gently but firmly pull out the edge of the dough and fold it over on itself, so you're developing the dough without serious kneading.
· This takes anywhere from 3-4 hours depending how warm it is in the house. The dough becomes more cohesive and kind of pulls away from the bowl and you can see air bubbles. It it's ready when you stretch it and suddenly it rips or tears, that means the gluten is developed and starting to go too far.
Tension building
Once you think it's gone as far as it should in the initial rise, turn it out of the bowl and onto the counter (un-floured surface).
· Flour the dough that is facing upwards, cut it in half, into two loaves with a bench knife.
· Then flip each dough over so the flour is now facing the countertop.
· Stretch the dough from the eastern tip outward, fold it over itself in half, use the bench knife to form a loaf, firmly but gently pivoting it around and pushing it into a round, do it to the other dough too, then cover them with a kitchen towel and wait at least 20 minutes or a half hour.
· Check to see that the dough hasn't spread too much over the counter but has remained more or less in the shape you left it. If it has spread a lot, you perform the same process again, and wait again, until the development feels solid enough
· If it hasn't spread much, or at all, you then flour the surface again, and flip it again.
· Then perform the folds you did for the first rise, stretching in each direction, stretching the E, folding it over, then the S etc., so you've done one series of folds, which is 4 pulls in each direction. Do this twice.
· Place a kitchen towel in a small bowl -- large enough to accommodate the dough plus anticipated rise expansion but not too large that the dough is swimming in a huge bowl.
· Liberally flour the top of the loaf and, using the bench knife, scrape up the dough in one swoop and flip the loaf into the bowl for the final rise, so the floured side is down facing the cloth. If you want to bake the same day leave the bowl with the bread out of the refrigerator to rise for another 3-5 hours depending on ambient temperature.
The Bake!
· When you're ready to bake you put a cast iron dutch oven pan with a lid in the oven and turn it to 500, and remove your bread from the refrigerator if it's been kept there.
· When the oven is up to temperature, sprinkle the top of the bread first with cornmeal or rice flour or regular flour, the top you have sprinkled will become the bottom of the loaf when you then quickly lift the towel in the bowl holding the bread and use it to invert it from the bowl into the hot pan, slash the top with a razor or cut it in a few places with scissors and put the lid back on as quickly as possible and return to the oven.
· Then, you immediately turn the oven down to 450 and keep the lid on for 20 minutes then remove the lid and let it finish until it's nicely dark on top, a little darker than you think seems to make a better loaf. This stage differs a lot depending on your oven, I keep mine at 500 the whole time and keep the lid on for 30 minutes, then off for about 5-7.
“He said: “...if the old Emperor had been surreptitiously Smothered; that same crowd in a moment would have hailed Their new Augustus. They shed their sense of responsibility Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything, Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only, Bread and circuses. ‘I hear that many will perish.’ ‘No doubt, The furnace is huge.’”
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