A Sourdough I am Happy With

I have baked many loaves of bread that you will never see. I've eaten them all to remind myself of what not to do the next time. They are not horrible but they aren't perfect. I strive for excellence in all regards and I'm happy to say that I have finally nailed down my technique for a sourdough that I'm pleased with. Why settle for anything less than something you can be proud of?

The way I made this sourdough is not one I could find anyone else utilizing. Because I like my sourdough to actually taste sour this bread was a three day process for me. I started with about 2 cups of my cultured wild starter in a large bowl and I added enough water and flour to double it. This sat and fermented for around 6 hours at which point I added enough flour to make the mixture into a runny dough. Very sticky and far too loose to work with. I used a butter knife to mix the dough and encourage gluten formation. I did this every few hours until my day was over and then the dough sat over night. In the morning I added a little more flour and continued the process. I did this until I had a dough that was the consistency I wanted. Tacky and somewhat wet dough that would stick to my hands if left to do so but could be worked if I moved quickly. This dough went into my cast iron Dutch oven to rise for a full 24 hours.

To bake this bread I started with the oven cold and placed the Dutch oven inside with the cover on. I used low heat (around 275F) for a long time and checked it every 20 minutes or so until the bread pulled itself from the walls of the Dutch oven. Taking the lid off I baked the bread until it started to turn golden brown and then turned the loaf out onto the rack of the oven and shut the heat off. I let the bread and oven cool until they were just warm and then I enjoyed my delicious and flavorful homemade sourdough.

It doesn't look half bad either.

How Did I Manage That?: A Sourdough Update.

As some of you will remember I cultured a sourdough starter some time ago. Since then, I have been keeping it active and baking with it on a regular basis to the tune of once a week. I have been producing some wonderful bread and my starter is surprisingly strong and robust.

It's just not very sour.

As anyone who has brewed beer can tell you, a large part of the brewing battle is sanitation. It does not take much for a beer to become home to the acid producing bacteria and turn into something you did not want and many won't drink. The antiseptic properties of hops help to keep these beasties at bay but in low hopped brews it is much more likely that they will take hold if your sanitation is not complete. In brews made without the use of hops it's almost impossible to stop them from taking roost unless another edible antiseptic is used.

With all of that in mind, how did I leave a starter medium exposed to the air for weeks and wind up with little or no acid producing beasties? I now have a very large culture of a strong, fairly cleanly fermenting and robust wild yeast. I have done lots of research and the most common answer I have found is that I am not giving the microbes enough time to work. Many assume the sourness of sourdough comes from the starter and do not let the beasties work on the freshly added flour for long enough. The last 4 batches I have made have had full 24 hour long proof/rise times. Before that I was working on 12 hours and some the earliest batches were 10 hours. The guides I have seen suggest a max of 20 hours. I'm pretty sure I've been giving the little guys enough time.

All in all I don't think I can be too displeased. I have a fairly constant supply of tasty bread, everyone who has tasted it has been quite happy and I always enjoy feeding others good food. I may try to make another starter once the weather warms up a bit and see if that helps me wrangle different beasties. I also may intentionally inoculate this starter with active cultures from other sources. Either way I will update with any news.

I'm also hoping to start a food and cooking group here in Salem before I head of to California. I'll have some more updates once that gets off the ground.

American Wheat Beer and General Updates

Today has been a productive day for me.

On my way back from an audition I stopped into Milk and Honey in downtown Salem MA to see if they had any rennet. Sadly, the answer was "no". Happily they had a great selection of organic food much of it from the area. They had an interesting selection of cheeses and other tasty things but what really caught my eye was their spices. They have a good selection of good quality spices for very cheap. I picked up an ounce of curry powder and an ounce of Chinese 5 spice for under 2 dollars. I am currently cooking some chicken with the 5 spice, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar and garlic. It smells wonderful.

My sourdough is very active and I have been feeding it with white flour for the last two days rather than just the whole wheat flour I had been using previously. I am doing this to diversify what I can use it for. I love whole wheat but it's not ideal for every recipe. A couple days ago I did take half of the starter and make a nice thin crust pizza with fresh tomato, garlic and some of the ricotta I wrote about earlier. Very tasty. The crust came out nicely and had a great flavor that may have been a bit too robust for some but was great for me.

On another note I was welcomed home by a nice big box that included the ingredients needed for my next 5 brewing projects as well as a new brew kettle and some necessities like sanitizer. This was an order from my favorite online brew shop: Brew Masters Warehouse. I jumped right into brewing an American wheat beer that will eventually turn into a raspberry wheat.

This is the first wheat beer that I have brewed and it is also my first beer brewed using the technique known as decoction mashing. This is a technique in which you take a portion of the mash and boil it to make for a more pronounced malt character and increased body in the final beer.
The major part of the mash is currently resting around 154F and there is a small portion in a separate pot bubbling along. The unfermented wort is very tasty and I look forward to what this will turn into. The recipe is simple and is as follows.

1 gallon batch

1 lbs Briess white wheat
11 oz Briess 2 row
2 oz Briess 2 row caramel 10
.1 oz Chinook pellets at 30 minutes
Nottingham Ale Yeast

This is defined as an American wheat because I am using standard ale yeast rather than a traditional strain. It will lack some of the more complex characters that traditional wheat beers are known for but it will be a fine American wheat. Look forward to more updates on this batch and on my next small batch brews. I have ingredients for a graff, a smoked robust porter and an IPA all in 1 gallon sizes.

Sourdough Is Go

For the last few days I have been following the general procedure for starting a sourdough starter.  Essentially, culturing yeast and other microbes from the air on a growth medium of water and whole wheat flower.  It sounds very scientific but it's really just leaving out a slurry of water and flour while hoping you catch the right beasties.  Luck is a big factor and if you are unlucky the smell will let you know.  There has been no activity to report on until this morning. 

Today the starter smells nice and yeasty with a mildly fruit character similar to a cider.  This is just the first sign that we have active fermentation and it seems like a good culture.  Cooking a sourdough of any kind is still a few days off at the least but this is a great development.  Working with sourdough is a long process and one that requires a lot of patience but once it's finished the rewards are well worth the wait.  I know one friend that got frustrated after the first couple days and scrapped her starter.  Any time fermentation is a factor in something you are making it is going to take a long time.  This is doubly true when fermenting with wild yeast as they are slow to start and very slow to finish.

I find it a bit odd that I am this excited about yeast and bacteria.  This is how supervillains start.

Sourdough Starter

Many times in the past I have made food with only local ingredients to enjoy the flavors of New England.  Local cider, home grown vegetables and locally hunted deer meat make for a meal that can't be replicated perfectly anywhere else.  This can be taken a step further with naturally fermented foods.  Of course we could talk about making local hard cider but I'll save that for another time. I want to talk about a food that many forget is actually fermented at all.

Sourdough bread.  All leavened bread is fermented at least a little so that the yeast produces carbon dioxide and makes the bread rise.  This will always lend a little flavor to the final product.  Sourdough takes this a step further and relies on wild yeast and bacteria to give it the distinct flavor we are looking for. 

Yeast and other microbes are all around us and they are like the fingerprint of your area.  Not only are the strains of wild yeast unique but they change with the seasons. Some beasties are happier in the summer weather and they will lend distinctly different flavors when compare to their cousins that are more active in the winter. The flavors that come from wild yeast and bacteria are wildly variable. A few times in the past I have brewed with wild yeast but I have never tried baking with it.  This will be my first attempt.

Sitting on my counter right now is a shallow and wide container with 3 tablespoons of whole wheat flour mixed with 2 tablespoons of water and the juice of a tangerine.  The initial acid helps to promote the growth of the bugs we want and stave off those that we don't.  The sour part of sourdough comes from acid producing microbes similar to those found in lambic style beers and yogurt.  I am hoping to get a strong culture of wild yeast and company bubbling along soon

I will be feeding this culture for about a week and I will keep you updated on its progress.  There is not much to report that is exciting at the moment but that will change when I am baking a brewing up a storm in the last stretch of winter.  If only my new ingredients and brew pot were not delayed by the weather.