As I sit down to start chugging this out, I’m literally bicep deep in a huge batch of pain au levain and about 4 large crambros of very wet very beautiful focaccia dough. Needless to say, good bread is very much in demand right now. It’s wanted, it’s needed, and it’s certainly getting a lot of good attention that most bread bakers are kind of rolling their eyes at thinking : yeah, no shit y’all.
Again, I’m lucky enough and feeling very grateful to be able to continue producing and also unlike many, experience a very big surge in my business. Apart of me is like yeah ok great, but also, a very very big part of me is like where the hell y’all been and AH! are y’all gonna still be here when we get back to “normal” which is a big part of the part 1 of this post: what is the value that we have, we are now, and the value we will continue to place on those producers in our local economy making high quality products.
I’ve thought a lot about this concept of “returning to normal,” and what that is even going to look like. And I’ve thought about this curious surge of folks wanting to bake ( and social media is showing a lot of this baking is sourdough focused), and what the heck that really means. I’m realizing that as we are all taking time to question what it is that so much commercialism and big business has but before us and deemed good, high quality, what you should buy (hello WONDERBREAD marketing): we are curious as to whether or not there is a better way: A simpler way, a more rooted, grounded, and focused way. And here is where bread comes in, right? There is nothing truly difficult about making bread, but what has become so hard for us in society is exactly the thing that makes bread baking (particularly from sourdough) a challenge. Sourdough Baking is a practice in intuition, physical feeling, patience, time, calmness, failure, practice, and resilience. I could give out a recipe all day long, but I can’t teach those things. It is exactly those things though that are REQUIRED to make consistent decent happy sourdough loaves and it is exactly those things that as humans over the last several decades we have been conditioned to buy and opt out of. In exchange we have been persuaded by this growing marketplace of goods that bread (and other items) are easy, cheap, mechanized (and therefore devauled), and constantly available everywhere. I was talking to a friend about how for at least the past decade, we have lived in such abundance. Abundance of choices and options, but has that abundance really been a good thing? Is this abundance really all that healthy for our minds, bodies, and spirits. Or has it taken the characteristic of human self sufficiency out of the equation? Is a trend toward more simplicity and self sufficiency on the horizon for us a human race?! (ALSO, just to be clear: I am speaking very much in terms of food production and consumption. I do believe in a well rounded marketplace, and I believe there are advantages to our health and wellbeing that come with these choices, I’m not some conspiracy theorist who believes we need to turn off the power and eat bird seeds for the rest of our days)
So here we are at this crossroads, pandemic to change our way of thinking, purchasing, and living; and TO CIRCLE BACK ALLLLL THE AROUND TO MY ORIGINAL POINT ;) BACK TO GOOD BREAD. And back to this desire I think we are all wanting to scratch to return to simplicity via bread baking : one of the most fundamental slow food activities that will ever exist. I have recently read Michael Pollan’s Cooked and it has very much brought me full circle to why I started baking in the first place (which is easy to get complacent with when you’ve worked in restaurants too long). It is so well written, and puts the anthropological forces of cooking into an informative and eye opening read. One of my favorite quotes that basically sums up why I don’t just hand out my recipe : “ this lack of control has never sat well with our species, which probably explains why the modern history of bread baking can be told as a series of steps aimed at taking UNRULINESS, UNCERTAINTY, and comparative slowness of biology out of the process.” We want fast, we want easy, and we want results when we want them, BUT unfortunately (as I say at the opening of all my bread baking workshops), Sourdough [bread] is going to do what sourdough [bread] wants to do when sourdough [bread] wants to do it. And heck, you better be ready to just be along for the ride.
So, here’s what I want to give you. An introduction, a roadmap, a way to be successful at sourdough baking that just giving you a recipe won’t do. Also please note, as a professional, if I give you my recipe and you turn it out all wonky and tag me up all in it, it doesn’t make my recipe look very successful and I just can’t have that. I want you all to start your own journeys and become intuitive and one with your own experience. That is truly the only way you will become a consistent and successful home baker.
The following is what I deem a good roadmap to success for making sourdough :
INVEST IN THE BACKGROUND// I.E. INVEST IN BOOKS, LITERATURE, HISTORY, and TECHNIQUE OF SOURDOUGH
COOKED by MICHAEL POLLAN. Particularly Part 3 “Air.”
FLOUR WATER SALT YEAST by Ken Forkish: a wealth of information and recipes for both commercially yeasted breads and naturally fermented/yeasted breads. I believe everyone should start by understanding commercially yeasted baking (active dry yeast) first and then add the variable of
TARTINE BREAD : Great to get more in depth into naturally fermented sourdough. techniques, shaping, etc.
THE SOURDOUGH SCHOOL: THIS IS MY FAVORITE SOURDOUGH BOOK BY FAR. It is also an online membership based way to learn. It is incredible.
START and/or BUY a STARTER/Mother/LEAVEN FROM ME AND MAINTAIN IT for a decent amount of time i.e. CREATE A CONSISTENT LIFE FOR YOUR STARTER: In order for you even begin mixing dough, you have to be able to take one look at your starter and know whether its ready or not. I feed my starters every day 3 times a day in the summer months and once or twice in the winter months.
If you buy a starter from me… aka PETE… he is a blend of 50/50 AP king arthur flour and whole wheat flour.
For home baking once a week, maintaing your starter with 150 grams of water and 150grams of flour blend is optimal, you’ll have several discards throughout the week.
A few side notes: the temperature of you water is IMPORTANT. right now, room temp is optimal (where you neither feel hot or cold). WHITE LILY AP FLOUR, CAKE FLOUR, PASTRY FLOUR: these are NO BUENO for your starter, there are too low in protein to sufficiently feed your baby starter ** (see note below).
PASS THE FLOAT TEST
MAKE SOURDOUGH PANCAKES FIRST. It’s easy, it’s low stakes, and you can start to learn what is going on with your ferment.
Do you go into your first yoga class and immediately jump into a headstand? No, you build your foundations first. You understand how your core, your arm strength, and your balance ultimately lead to a successful headstand. It is the same thing with sourdough bread. Start from the beginning and do the work.
The final thing I want to leave with everyone… whether you are just starting this journey today or you’ve been trying for the last several months. MAKING GOOD BREAD is only achieved by building and maintaining a healthy robust and successful starter which is a lot like maintaining a toddler. If you have a toddler and feel offended that I am comparing toddler rearing to starter maintaining I am sorry. You are right, I don’t have kids, but my sourdough is my livelihood and when it fails I fail. So, I put it into perspective like I would keeping a toddler who is on a championship soccer team healthy and active. If he eats crap (low protein flour like white lily flour would be an example), he won’t have enough energy (fermentation) to score any goals (be a good loaf). If he eats right before the game (mixing dough before your starter is ready), he might totally vomit in the first half (not ferment well and therefore bake totally wrong). So when you feed your toddler (starter) well (with a high quality medium protein level flour and warm water) in enough time to metabolize, he or she will go into that game full of vigor and energy (fermentation and proofing) to be the best teammate and player he or she can be and win the game (get a lovely bake).
cheers, and hopefully, happy baking!
S