Nome Makes Sourdough

Yep, it had to happen. It's weeks now since I stopped buying supermarket bread in favour of homemade no-knead loaves, and with all this reading about bread and experimentation (and particularly inspired by this programme on BBC4 not long ago) it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at that so-called king of breads, sourdough.

You won't find yeast in a sourdough recipe. Instead it calls for a few tablespoons of 'starter' - a boozy-smelling home-brew of flour and water which breeds wild yeasts present in the air and the flour. This creates a bread with more complex flavour. Caring for a starter is a little like caring for a pet: you have to clean it out and feed it once a day, by transferring half the concoction to a clean bowl or jar (discarding the rest, otherwise it'll just keep getting bigger!) and adding fresh flour and water to feed the yeasty microorganisms and keep it going. Luckily it's more forgiving than most pets; if you forget to feed it once in a while it won't really mind, and you can slow it right down by keeping it in the fridge, where you won't have to feed it very often at all.

You can buy dehydrated starter and wake it up by rehydrating or you can beg some from another sourdough baker, but I decided to make my own from scratch, and followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's instructions here to do so. It's basically a case of whisking flour and water together, leaving it until it begins to ferment, and then feeding it regularly until it builds up its strength.

Here is my starter after the first 24 hours. I used wholemeal flour, which is why it's so dark, and if you look closely you can see lots of little bubbles have risen to the top to show that fermentation has begun. Appetising, huh?

I got into the routine after a few days, but I was a bit worried about my starter. Looking at pictures of other starters online (like this one), most seemed to be a lot bubblier than mine. Mine also kept getting a layer of liquid through the middle, with a frothy layer which sort of dried out and went crusty on top:

Apparently the liquid is called hooch and is perfectly normal - an indicator that the microorganisms have finished their meal, thank you very much - and the crust can just be stirred back in, so I had nothing to worry about. But still, my starter didn't look like others - the bubbles are tiny and few, while others look like swiss cheese right through!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says that the starter's consistency should be like 'thick paint', but I started to notice that in a lot of the pictures I was looking at, the starters appeared thicker than mine. So I began using a little less water each feed to thicken mine up.

Lo and behold, the bubbles got bigger and the top frothed more...

 

I kept thickening, just a little each day, until the spoon left a trail when I stirred, and the layers disappeared altogether so there's no hooch, and bubbles throughout. Hurrah!

 

Now I had much more confidence in my starter, it was time to put this baby to work!

I followed Hugh's recipe as in the link above for my first attempt. He's pretty vague on timings, but that's probably a good thing as my dough was very slow to rise.

First you make a 'sponge', by mixing a portion of the starter with some more flour and water - this basically just makes it bigger and thicker. I left this gloopy mixture overnight to rise.

Then this is mixed with more flour and a little salt, and kneaded for ten minutes until 'silky and elastic'. I don't think I've kneaded anything since home economics lessons in school... It was tricky and I reckon I added far too much extra flour as I went along to try to stop it sticking. If you put it down and leave it in the same place for more than a couple of seconds it sticks! In the end I resorted to kneading it mid-air, without the board - just stretching and folding it between my hands! Not sure it'll catch on but it seemed to work! When it was really stretchy I shaped it into a ball, oiled it all over, and left it in a bowl - covered with clingfilm to stop it drying out - to rise.

Eight hours later...

Well, I wasn't that impressed by its rising-power, but I wanted to get this loaf baked before bedtime so I pressed on.

The next stage is to 'punch down' the dough - squash it and knock it about a bit to knock the air out. Easy enough. Then I shaped the loaf into a round again, floured a bowl, and put the dough in for a second rising period, called proving. What I didn't do, and should have done, was to line the bowl with a floured cloth instead of just putting the dough straight in. Having preheated and floured my baking sheet and put a tray of boiling water in the bottom of the oven to increase humidity, I then had to wrestle the dough out of its bowl at the last minute. Not good at all for all the precious air bubbles it had been forming all afternoon - you're supposed to be gentle with it once proved!

At this stage, I pretty much thought all was lost. It hadn't doubled in size like the recipe said, it wasn't holding its shape like it should (it pretty much just oozed all over the baking tray as soon as I tipped it out of the bowl), and to make matters worse I'd noticed a bad smell in the rapeseed oil I'd used to oil it... I didn't bother slashing it and I didn't bother taking photos. In fact I was feeling pretty grumpy about it all.

But before my very eyes, it started rising in the oven... It rose and it rose and it rose! And forty minutes later...

Wow. The crust is crunchy but thin, and beautifully golden-brown. The crumb is bubbly and moist and springy. A triumph! There is just one little problem though...

I don't like the taste! I can't quite think whether I've ever eaten sourdough before, so I have little to compare it to, but it has a really vinegary hit right at the back of my mouth which I can't bear. It's not so bad toasted, but cold it's just inedible for me! (Luckily Mum likes it, so she's helping eat it.)

I got straight back online, of course, searched for 'sourdough too sour', and quickly found that it's a common problem for beginners and can be combatted. Phew! This very useful article explains that the sourness comes from a build-up of acid, which can be lowered by (a) feeding the starter more frequently (b) letting the dough rise for a shorter time - this will mean using more starter in the dough to provide more yeast (c) using a flour with a low ash content and (d) thinning the starter.

Doh!

So the adventure continues...

I'm going to feed the starter three times a day for a couple of days and then try Carl Legge's sourdough method here, which involves folding the dough instead of kneading it (sounds much more my cup of tea). I might also try a higher proportion of starter in the sponge (or a higher proportion of sponge to additional flour)... can any seasoned bakers comment on the best way to do that?

In the meantime, I found myself breadless yesterday since I couldn't eat the sourdough loaf, so I had a crack at Mark Bittman's 'speedy no-knead bread' here. It uses six times the yeast but only needs to rise for four hours and prove for one, so we had bread by dinnertime after all. And what a lovely loaf! It has perhaps a little less flavour than ordinary no-knead bread, but it's so delightfully soft and light and moist and lovely that it was a struggle not to munch the whole thing down fresh from the oven.

I'll certainly be calling on this recipe again next time I need bread within an afternoon, rather than within a day.

Nome Makes Bread

Breadmaking is another of those self-sufficientish kinda things I've always meant to try but only recently got round to. Of course, one day I'd like to have a bash at growing my own little patch of wheat, and grinding my own fresh flours, but for now it'd be nice just to eat real bread that isn't stuffed with preservatives, stabilisers and other unnecessaries.

So for the past few weeks I've been experimenting with Jim Lahey's 'no-knead' breadmaking method (inspired by Monica over at SmarterFitter). It's just my kind of recipe; perfect for busy modern folk, or just lazy ones... What you do need to do, however, is plan ahead; instead of kneading, the dough is left to sit and do its yeasty thing for up to 26 hours (minimum about 13), so you generally need to start the day before. The other thing you need is a heavy ovenproof pan with a lid - this makes a great crust by holding the heat and steaming the bread in its own moisture.

I really can't stress enough how easy this is. It uses only the most basic of ingredients: flour, fast-action yeast, salt and water - and it takes just three or four minutes to mix the ingredients together, then five or six minutes to fold the dough and put it in a pan later. Then it's just a case of switching the oven on and off when required.
 

You can find Monica's recipes here - she's been doing this a lot longer than me - but I've been keeping it perhaps even simpler. Also of interest is this article on Jim Lahey's technique. If you fancy trying the recipe below, also bear in mind you may have to alter cooking times and temperatures depending on your oven - it took a bit of experimentation before I found what worked best for me (and I tweaked things to get a slightly softer crust).

So... 

No-Knead Bread
(makes a 750g loaf, approx.)

• In a large bowl, mix together 470g bread flour (including seeds if required), 10g (1 tbsp) sea salt, 1/4 tsp quick yeast, and 350ml water. Wholemeal flours absorb more water so you might need a bit extra. You can't really make it too wet so don't worry.

• Cover (I use a plate or baking tray, to save on the plastic wrap) and leave for 12-24 hours. After that time it should have roughly doubled in size, and will be full of big air bubbles. A bit like this:

• Tip the dough out onto a well-floured surface, with well-floured hands! Stretch the ends out and fold them one over the other, like folding a business letter into thirds. Then turn the dough 90 degrees and do the same again.
• Pop the dough, seam side up, in an oiled pan (remember to use a heavy pan with a lid) and let rest for another one to two hours.
• Then place it in a cold oven and turn up to 240C. After 25 minutes turn down to 200C. After another 35 minutes, take the lid off the pan to let the top crisp up. Then after another 5 minutes, remove from the oven. (Wholemeal flours need up to 10 minutes longer in the oven.)
• Cool on a wire rack.

Mmmm, can you smell it? This bread has great flavour due to the long fermentation time. The texture is slightly different to what I expected - more springy than fluffy like some artisan breads - but it's lovely. And it's easy to slice - bonus!

I started out using my 24cm cast iron casserole dish, but of course I got a very wide flat loaf - not ideal for sandwiches or the toaster.

So I tried making the bread in a 19cm cake tin inside the casserole dish, and it worked a treat!

And of course, one of the great things about making your own bread is trying out different types or mixes of flour. I've made white, I've made wholemeal, I've made my own mixes using different types of seeds, but the very best I've made was with this Allinson speciality flour: a white seeded mix. It's delish!

Now, other than being delicious, satisfying and easy to make, there are two more things I need from my home-baked bread. I need it to be cheap, and I need it to be healthy.

My shop-bought bread of choice costs £1.25 a loaf and lasts around four days. A 1.5kg bag of Sainsbury's-own bread flour costing £1.05 makes three loaves, each lasting two days. The cost of the yeast is less than 1p per loaf and the cost of the salt is around 5p per loaf. So my loaves using this flour come in at about 41p each, or 82p for the four days a store-bought loaf would last - not bad! (I should probably factor in the cost of the electricity used by the oven too, but I just don't have that much time on my hands...) However, speciality flours and seeds cost quite a bit more; the flour pictured above costs £1.10 for 1kg, making two loaves. That's £1.22 for the four days - still cheaper but only just.

Results are pleasing on the health front too (and of course, we know it has no funny chemicals in it). My bread (even with 100% white flour, the least healthy choice), has a few calories less than the shop-bought loaf per 100g (207 vs 235), and slightly less fat (1g vs 2.5g). It has more sodium though (500mg vs 390mg), so I think the next thing to experiment with is bringing that down slightly. However, my bread is denser so two slices actually weighs around 50% more than the shop-bought stuff. Hmmm. And there's always the danger I'll eat more of it, because it's so tasty! I'll have to be sure to cut my slices thin and not get carried away!

Edit: This calorie information is wrong - I totally miscalculated the weight of the water content. My bread is actually much lower in calories! I'll work on figuring out how many...

On the whole, it's a triumph all round. If you don't already make your own bread, give it a try!