The Sourdough Series #1
I’m very happy to present you the first of a series of posts about sourdough bread! The point is to meet some sourdough bread makers from all over the world sharing a bit of what they know and still don’t, and how exciting it is to make your own real bread, with no weird things on it — chemical yeast, E-whatever, preservatives, sugar, and the list goes on. So I hope this is the place for that and I would be very happy if this encourages you to try sourdough at home. It sounds scary in the beginning but, believe me, you can do it!
So, a quick explanation about sourdough bread, if you’re only hearing the term now: it’s a natural form of fermentation — actually, it is the ancient form of making bread. You just need water, flour, and water. Time and temperature will make the rest, basically. You mix flour and water until you have a sourdough starter, that you’ll have to feed it so you always have some to use in your breads. Its flavour gets deeper through time and the older it gets, the better. So take good care of yours!
The first sourdough story is with Inês, the author of My Tiny Green Kitchen, a blog I’ve been following for a while. If you follow it on instagram, you’ll notice the beautiful homemade breads she shares and man, do they look nice! So I’ve decided to talk a little bit with her, about her sourdough practise.
Inês described bread as being “the peak of culinary independency, since it’s one of the basis of human diet since thousands of years, and nowadays it’s almost an eccentricity to make it at home”. On her way to a diet with less processed foods, making bread without chemical yeast became one of her goals since July 2016.
The beginning wasn’t easy. I think everyone struggles with creating a starter — I did too. Inês asked for some advise to Natasa Djuric, the author of the blog My Daily Sourdough Bread, and so she succeeded. The process than becomes easier: as she bakes one bread per week, her starter stays in the fridge meanwhile. To use it for the bread, she takes out the upper part — more or less a third of it — and feeds it with 20gr of flour. It’s only when its volume increases that she takes a spoon out of it and creates the starter for the bread she’s planning to make. To bake it, her clay pan is her special instrument.
Through these months, she has learnt the most important of things: respecting the process. “There is no use in wanting things to be faster or slower, or to expect it to be always the same way every time. Each bread is a bread and everything is connected: the air’s temperature, the flour… We have to adapt to each moment and learn to use our senses and instincts, much more than just following the recipe”.
Inês tends to follow some proportion rules that seem to work: 100gr of starter with 100% hydration, which means equals parts of water and flour — for 100gr of starter, there will be 50gr of water and 50gr of flour — , 300gr of flour, 200gr of water, and 10gr of salt. As she experiences more, she allows herself to try different combinations: carob and nuts, rye with wheat, or corn with wheat. In the beginning, some of her breads used to be a little thick, with not much air bubbles, but now they are better.
What could be going wrong before then? Well, Inês says everything had to do with hydration level. “I wasn’t experienced enough to understand if the mixture needed more water, cause it’s hydration that creates bubbles. It’s also important to precise how long is the leavening time, so it doesn’t lack or exceed. You just need to bake some breads until you get sensitive enough to understand which specific bread needs.”
And for those of you who have been thinking about making your sourdough bread, but haven’t started it (yet!), Inês tells you to be ready for an adventure and a learning experience way beyond bread! “Each mistake is an opportunity to learn and discover. And when you nail it and see a beautiful bread coming out of the oven, made only with flour, water, and salt, after you seeing it growing and transforming at each step, it’s no less than magic happening. Magic happening with your own hands”.
