Inspired by YouTube's Jill 4 Today bread series, I bought the gorgeous bread bible, Bread Alone. This is an incredible READ about everything there is to know about baking bread and it's a very informative reference book. It's very detailed and very authentic about the whys, hows, and with whats (and at what temperature!) so I have a lot to learn. Still, even though I have only scratched the surface studying the chapters, I dove right in and wanted to try making sourdough.
This is not an afternoon process. It takes 4 days to make a 'chef', the water, flour, and ever so slight pinch of yeast, combination that sits and grows over that time. It ferments and bubbles, grows and shrinks, all while being fed each day with more flour and water. After the 4 days that chef is used to make the sourdough starter. That in itself requires another 8-10 hours of growth before it is used to make the bread dough.
Finally, it's time to make the bread. I happened to flip to the sourdough chapter and the first recipe is rye sourdough so that is what I made. The authors guide you in a detailed flour, water, and yeast selection process and I did the best I could with what I could find at the local health food store. While my rye flour was organic, there was no detail as to how it was ground - stone or not. I did purchase spring water and used commercial baker's yeast. I couldn't find 20% bran flour of any kind so used a combination of white flour along with the whole wheat flour I had on hand.
Luckily, I have a beautiful, large Kitchen Aid mixer (a surprise gift from hubby last year) and without it I couldn't have mixed up the dough as easily. The recipe yields 2 large loaves so there is a lot of flour to mix and knead. As it was, I had flour everywhere in the kitchen and many, many dishes and dirty tea towels! After the dough was ready it rises for over two hours. Don't forget we are not working with added yeast so the proofing process takes longer than usual. The dough is then shaped and allowed to rise again. Then the bread is baked. I didn't use a stone hearth and didn't fuss with repeated water sprayings to make steam within the oven. At this point, I was tired of waiting and just wanted the bread!
The results were good. The crust is nice and crispy and the flavour is excellent. I added caraway seeds to the rye bread so the taste was quite pronounced. The texture was a little heavy for my liking but hubby adored the bread. (This was actually a blessing for me because I have a terrible weakness for fresh bread and butter and if the loaf was made with white flour, I probably couldn't have controlled my portions as well!).
I love the book and am enjoying learning more about bread making. I will definitely be attempting more loaves, perhaps not with rye flour next time and with a less rigid attitude about the techniques and timing. I also will shelve the 'levain/starter' sourdough idea for now since it is just too long to wait to smell that homemade bread baking.
Comments