COVID-19 brought with it more time to do slow cooking, and baking. One of the most demanding baking ideas I’ve had is to make sourdough bread. Not demanding in terms of time, but commitment. Like a Tamagochi, this thing needs to be fed and nurtured regularly. Unlike a child or a pet, neither the Tamagochi nor the sourdough will suffer if I neglect them. I’m fairly sure they have no feelings, consciousness or ability to make my life worse.

That gives me some freedom: I choose to breed a sourdough starter. It’s not forced on me. It’s not unethical to suddenly say “ah, I don’t want to do this anymore.” There’s really only the bread and process that keeps me going. And yet, I persist. After spending a year trying to understand sourdough and baking, this is what I’ve learned.

Original recipe

• 300 g (Spelt) bread flour
• 9 g salt (3%F)
• Spices (anise, fennel seeds, nutmeg, ginger)
• 50 g sourdough starter (I use 30–70 g)
• 220 g lukewarm water (73%F, but only 200 g if using Spelt)

1. Feed the sourdough starter.
2. Mix flour, salt, and spices.
3. Add fed sourdough starter and water. Mix until all flour is wet.
4. Let rest for 20 min, then do stretch and fold. Repeat four times.
5. Move to a tall container and mark current size (rubber band or whiteboard marker).
6. Bulk ferment until 25–50% larger.
7. Preshape into a ball.
8. Let rest for 20 min.
9. Stretch out to a sheet, and roll it up.
10. Raise in a baneton until 50–100% larger.
11. Bake in a Dutch oven (cast iron pot) at 260 °C for 25 min.
12. Bake without lid at 230 °C for 20 min.

This is based on Pro Home Cooks – 15 Mistakes Most Beginner Sourdough Bakers Make, and heavily inspired by Foodgeek. I owe a ton of gratitude to them. While at it, I’ll also note that The Bread Kitchen was an overall inspiration for baking, though not sourdough in particular.

Form with function

Nowadays, I’ve settled on using a form because it gives the bread a uniform size. I don’t have a proper baneton, and used a kitchen towel over a bowl, which isn’t giving the bread a great shape. Easier to just use a form:

1. Mix flour, salt, and spices.
2. Add unfed sourdough starter and water. Mix until all flour is wet. I feed the rest of the starter at the same time.
3. Let rest for 20 min, then do stretch and fold. Repeat four times.
4. Move to a tall container and mark current size (rubber band or whiteboard marker).
5. Bulk ferment until 25–50% larger.
6. Preshape into a ball. Stretch out to a sheet, and roll it up.
7. Put in fridge overnight since I don’t have time to do everything in one day.
8. Raise in a bread form until 50–100% larger.
9. Bake with lid/foil at 260 °C for 25 min.
10. Bake without lid at 230 °C for 25 min.

My biggest problem with recipes is that they don’t explain why we do some things. Is the preshaping necessary? Is it just cargo-culting from someone? Did it have a function, but doesn’t any longer?

Lessons learned about baking

The answers are probably obvious to someone who’s already a baker, and I’m slightly annoyed with my own incompetence. Nevertheless, here are some reasons for why the receipe above is the way it is.

• My taste in salt has changed over the year. At first, I thought 3%F was barely enough, now I think I’ll want to lower it to 2–2.5% (which is more normal). If this is how my taste varies over the course a year, imagine how much it varies person to person.
• Working with sourdough starter is way slower than working with concentrated yeast. Fermentation times are counted in hours, not minutes.
• Spelt absorbs less water than wheat, and has less gluten.
• Adding 10% rye flour doesn’t affect the amount of water, but with 20%, more water is needed. I.e. small quantities of less-absorbing flours are added on top of the bulk flour, not replacing it.
• Because we’re trying to build sheets of gluten threads, stretching a dough and rolling it flat using a rolling pin are two very different actions and shouldn’t be confused.
• A sourdough contains yeast and lactic acid bacteria, and they multiply the fastest at different temperatures. That means fermentation temperature affects taste, not just speed. Yeast multiplies the fastest at 29 °C and lactic acid bacteria at 33 °C.
• Using a heating mat (like a reptile mat) greatly speeds up yeast action, and also allows more control. A proper proofer would be nice, but I don’t cook enough to warrant the space.
• Bulk fermenting is about letting the yeast multiply. You don’t care about the gas produced at this stage, which is why some recipes suggest you “knock” it out. After bulk fermenting, you want to do some massaging of the dough to spread the yeast again.
• Shaping a loaf is about creating a stretched outer shell. This makes the dough keep its shape better. Preshaping and resting is done because the gluten threads slowly glide apart in high-hydration doughs. By letting it rest before the final shaping, they’ve hopefully set a bit.
• When using a form, shaping doesn’t matter much as the loaf grows enough in a single direction that it will stretch out no matter what.
• When cleaning uncooked dough, use cold water so the gluten doesn’t coagulate.
• Using corn starch or rice flour in the baneton avoids the dough sticking to the cloth, unlike wheat flour. The wheat flour sucks up the moisture in a way the starch-rich flours don’t.
• If the form bread has a detached skin, next time, poke your fingers on it before baking to reattach the dough layers in some (but not all) places.