Sourdough: The Sequel

My lovely sister is visiting this week, and she is way better at all baking things than I am – so I was glad for her help with my second attempt at sourdough bread.

Eliz brought The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, whom I think is just fabulous. She completely overloads the reader with useful information. When you muck through all the thorough and exact instructions for breadmaking, you can see her personality and lovely sense of humor in her writing.

Ms. Beranbaum describes sourdough as being “the final frontier” of breadmaking. (she also calls it the breadmaking “holy grail”) Her appreciation for how difficult it is to make proper sourdough made me feel better that my first attempt didn’t go quite right – and to be honest, this attempt (although VERY yummy) was also not quite there yet. But apparently the longer the starter continues to be fed and used and fed some more, the better and more sour the bread will turn out. It is on its way, and I’ll tell the steps we took to make the starter.

Day One:
On Wednesday evening, we decided to start the bread, since the whole process takes a few days. We mixed a scant cup of flour, 1/16 teaspoon of yeast, and half a cup of bottled water (and a few more drops to moisten it a little more at the end). We mixed it until the flour was moistened and a stiff dough was formed. How do you measure 1/16 tsp of yeast? Like this.

She specifies to use an “immaculately clean bowl” when doing this, yet allows us to mix with our hands, which Chris points out is not completely sanitary anymore, so what is the point of making sure the bowl is so immaculately clean?

Anyway, you end up with this moist ball of dough. 

It's also useful to have a brother-in-law/husband reading on the couch during this process. 

We covered the dough and left it on top of the refrigerator for 24 hours.

We'll be back right after these messages! 

....

Need to cover a bowl and make it airtight??

Normal plastic wrap not sticking right 

and getting you down?!

It's time to switch to Glad Press-N-Seal!!

I. Love. This. Stuff. 

Seriously, it has changed my life. 

It's a little more expensive but a lot more awesome. 

I made a chai mix in a normal drinking glass - 

covered it in press-n-seal -

shook it up as if it had an airtight lid. 

Yes, it really is that good. 

Go buy some. 

aaaaaaaaaaaand we're back.

Day Two:
The batter had begun to bubble. (as it was supposed to)

We removed about half of it (scooping it with a clean spoon and throwing it away), and stirred in ½ cup of flour and ¼ cup of water (bottled). Again, we covered it and left it to bubble away in the warmth of the top of the refrigerator for another 24 hours.

Day Three:
Same song, third verse, a little bit faster and a little bit worse! The dough was more fermented.

We scooped out half of the batter, threw it away, added ½ cup of flour, and ¼ cup of bottled water. Covered and left to bubble some more.

Day Four:
Yep, same thing again.
Ms. Beranbaum suggests at this point to name your rising dough, as it has begun to live and breath and is every bit as high maintenance as a pet. (She named hers "Billow." I named ours "Harvey.")

Day Five:
Today we began the process of making the bread. We turned the liquid starter into a stiff starter, at the suggestion of Ms. Beranbaum. We achieved this by mixing one cup of the starter with ¾ cup of flour. (The rest of the starter went into the fridge to be fed and coddled for the next batch of sour dough.)

Surely there is a faster way to make a loaf of bread. It rose eight times over two days, and it wasn’t until the last rising that it began rising horizontally instead of vertically, and began to appear as if it might not work. The end product was tasty, though not ideal in look or temperament.