There are few things in life as wonderful as fresh baked bread. And for bread aficionados, sourdough is the king of bread! Making a good loaf of sourdough is a skill well worth the effort to learn, and in this diary we will discuss how to create and use a sourdough starter.
So what is a sourdough starter? True sourdough gets it zesty flavor from wild yeast. The commercial yeast you find in packets at the grocery store is domesticated to be easy to produce and have a long shelf life. They're fast, efficient, and..well...tasteless. Wild yeast is none of these things. A sourdough starter is essentially a culture of wild yeast kept in a flour/water medium.
Making a sourdough starter is painfully easy. Take one cup of flour and mix it with one cup of water in a glass or plastic jar (no metal containers) and leave it there. After one day you mix the starter, dump out half of it, and add 1/2 cup flour and water and stir again and put it back in its warm open place. You continue this process for several days until the mixture is nice and bubbly and you can smell the yeasty aroma. Give this process at least a week, and once it's well established you can cover the jar or container and put it in the fridge and reduce "feedings" to once a week.
Your sourdough starter will become like a pet. You have to feed it and take care of it and in return, it will feed and take care of you, but don't worry about killing your starter. It's very easy to start over again as wild yeast is everywhere. If you do keep your starter in the fridge, be sure when you take it out that you bring it back to room temperature before you dump half, and add flour and water. Give it a few hours more to digest what it has and put it back in the fridge.
Using a sourdough starter is pretty straightforward. Instead of throwing away half of the starter when you feed it, put that starter in a bowl (preferably glass or ceramic but a stainless steel bowl will work for this purpose). Add enough water (preferably bottled or filters because chorine will kill yeast) and flour to create a dough. add a little salt. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook it's a lot easier to see, it should cling to the hook and be clean the sides of the bowl. The mother of a friend of mine showed me how to do it and I swear she didn't measure a single thing! She just threw stuff in the mixing bowl and let it go! The finished dough should be slightly sticky.
Once the dough is made, it needs to go through its first raising. Take a glass or ceramic bowl (no metal for this) and pour enough oil to coat the dough and that's what you do. You roll the dough around in the oily bowl and cover with a tea towel in a warm place (an oven with the light on is a good suggestion) for 6 hours or overnight.
If everything is working, the dough should be twice its original size and ready to knead. Punch it down and kneed the heck out of it on a floured surface. My friend's mother showed me this technique where you pick up one end of the dough, let it droop a bit, raise it up and SLAM it on the counter and folder the remainder up over itself. It was a lot of fun because it was really loud. Kneading the dough serves to create gluten, the protein in wheat that gives bread a chewy texture. As you're working it you can feel it get more elastic and it should develop a sheen on the surface as you knead.
When the dough is nice and kneaded, cut it into equal portions depending on the loaf size you want. round loaves are considered customary for sourdough and for the second raising, to get a really nice rustic round loaf, you want to take a shallow, round, wicker basket and line it with a textured kitchen towel. Dust the towel with flour and lay the dough on the towel, and loosely wrap the corners over the top. Put it back in its warm place and leave it there for another SEVERAL hours until it's increased enough in size. Now it's time to bake.
A baking stone is ideal for baking a nice crusty round loaf, but all you have is a baking sheet that will do as well. Whatever you choose, make sure to heat it in a 375 degree oven before baking, if it's a baking pan, grease it. If it's a baking stone, sprinkle it with cornmeal and very carefully put the loaf on the cooking surface, score the top of the loaf in a hash tag pattern with a sharp knife, and bake for 30min or until golden brown.
Yum. Even if your first loaf doesn't turn out perfect, it will get better with time and be a delicious way to learn.
If you wish to learn more specifics about sourdough baking, there are many resources on the internet. Two excellent books on bread making in general are "Dough" and "Crust" by Richard Bertinet.