sourdough

Since I don’t have enough bread books (ha) I get a lot from the library. I am usually tempted but manage to resist buying them, but Dan Leader’s Local Breads was an exception (even though I haven’t fully baked my way through his other excellent book, Bread Alone, which got me into bread baking before I discovered Peter Reinhart). How could I not buy a book that had a recipe for Czech breads?

Not that I’ve made any of those Czech breads (or much else). Part of the issue is that various types of sourdough are called for in this book–not just wheat and rye, but firm sourdoughs, and even a semolina version. (My fridge is just not big enough; luckily even the author notes that it might be a bit excessive to keep them all going and that if you have one good starter you can use it to jump start all the others).

Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking Across America explains how to convert a wet sourdough starter into a firm sourdough (or as Dan Leader calls it, a “stiff dough levain”–my adaptation follows below). I could have done the math myself I suppose, but this wasn’t going to happen, so I appreciated this bit of work on her part. And now I could make Pain au Levain from Local Breads!

The most exciting part of making this bread was that I finally achieved windowpane! This combined with my recent “discovery” of steaming the bread in the initial phases of baking had me very excited. Because I was so excited to use my bannetons that I got for my birthday I didn’t make the traditional batard shape, but no matter. (I should have lined my banneton with a cloth. Be warned! Washing out the flour just converts it into a paste that sticks in the ridges).

And I loved this bread! I have a bit of an inability to commit to one bread or the other, but I could see this one being one I’d like to make over and over. It has a great mildly sour taste (but not overwhelming); and though it’s a white bread it has a bit of wheat and rye which makes it all the more interesting. I think I could achieve even better windowpane next time (I might have stopped a hair too early) so I’m looking forward to repeats.

A final note on this book–while I do love it there is quite a bit of errata–please check the Bread Alone website for the corrections.

Conversion of a liquid starter to a firm starter:

1T liquid starter
1T lukewarm water
1/3c bread flour

Mix the starter and water until frothy. Add the bread flour and stir (you may need to knead briefly to incorporate). It should double within 8-12 hours.

I refreshed per the instructions in Dan Leader’s book, which is a slightly different proportion of flour, water, and starter because you are no longer converting. In this case it is

1/4c (50g) starter
1/4 c (50g) water
2/3c (95g) bread flour
2T (5g) whole wheat flour

UPDATE: A day after publishing this post, I was flipping through Bread Baker’s Apprentice and realized that in his basic Sourdough Bread recipe, Reinhart explains how to convert his liquid starter/barm into a levain. Whoops–so you can find it there too it seems. What can I say, it’s hard to keep all these different names straight for me!

This BBA Challenge is getting serious. A bread with no wheat? A bread with no commercial yeast? Yes, a challenge indeed. That’s right; the 100% in the 100% sourdough rye refers to both the leavener (sourdough) and the grain (rye). That means none of the structure created by wheat’s strong gluten, and none of the predictability of commercial yeast to inflate that gluten network. It’s hard to say what is more intimidating, but I’ll have to go with the 100% sourdough part of the equation: though I have managed to keep my starter alive, a small part of me is still a doubter and it’s always a leap of faith for me as to whether it’s going to rise.

Here’s the barm, looking rather insubstantial.

And here is the mixed dough mid-rise.

Looking good, right? While I had to help things out by moving the dough to the sunroom (where it is, as you might have guessed, warmer) it did eventually rise.

It was when I formed the batards that I worried. Or I came out of denial and admitted to myself that there was a problem. I actually had an inkling way back at the kneading stage. Peter Reinhart cautions strongly against overmixing the dough when using rye–apparently it can become quite gummy if it is worked too much. Combined with the fact that I think I am not mixing my doughs on high enough speed, my kneading here was probably not up to snuff. While I’m guessing that lackluster kneading is more forgivable with wheat flour (due to how easy it is to form at least some gluten) I think with rye the balance is much more delicate, as its gluten is similarly delicate. In fear of gummy bread, I almost certainly always underknead. (Question at end; hint hint!)

When forming the batards, rather than getting any surface tension in my loaves, the dough ripped apart. I smoothed it out, but the look of things after the second rise only further confirmed my fears–instead of rising my loaves responded to the action of the yeast by tearing raggedly apart as if brutally gashed open–no need to get out my lame, apparently.

Having come this far, of course I baked my loaves off. And I did find that the bread had a wonderfully earthy and complex taste. I need more practice to be sure, but luckily being off the mark didn’t mean I had a bread brick. Peter Reinhart’s sourdough rye is supposed to be quite dense in any case, I just don’t think quite so dense as mine turned out to be. (Note: my suspicion about my rye kneading problems was confirmed when I made the BBA Pumpernickel Bread, blogged here.)

One question I’ve always had is the speed my kitchenaid mixer should be set at. The instructions for my mixer say that you should never set the speed above 2 when making bread, but I’ve never achieved anything close to a windowpane being a good girl and following the manual. It seems that Reinhart means for you to knead at a higher speed (see here, just as an example). Do other people knead at a higher speed, and if so, what? Have you had problems with your motor as a result, or do you just watch to make sure it doesn’t overheat? As you can tell, I baby my kitchenaid stand mixer a bit. Hey, it’s not cheap.