drogon's blog

Here we are again - its now Monday morning (normally a day I don't make bread!) however I've some dough I made up last night that needs attending to.

Last night the dough was left in a (relatively) cool place - about 18°C at about 9:45pm. It's now about 7:40am and I've taken the bowl of fermented dough up to the warmer bakehouse and stuck a thermometer in it:

As you can see, it's risen nicely and cooled down to 18°C. (And I was dopy enough to put my thumb over the camera lens - ah well)

Using the rounded end of my scraper I gently tipped the dough out of the bowl (note I didn't bother using oil, flour, etc. in the bowl last night) and I then gave it 3 gentle stretch and folds with the forth being used to turn it over then it was chaffed into a rough boulle. This is what I consider to be the only real special "technical" part of making this bread. Normally I'll have a tub with 4 or 6 loaves worth of dough in it which I'll tip out, stretch/fold then divide up using scales and roughly shape into boulles.

A rough boulle.

I then left this for 10 minutes "bench rest" while I busied myself with other stuff then prepared a lined basket for it to prove in.

I floured the inside of the basket and just a little on-top of the dough.

Next the dough was flipped upside down and degassed/patted out:

I then shaped it into a boulle by lifting the top, gently stretching it and folding it over the dough, then doing the same 5 mote times, so at approximately the 3 O'Clock, 5 O'Clock, 7 O'Clock and 9 O'Clock positions, flipped it over and chaffed it into a boulle then put this seam side UP into the basket.

Just realised that photo is grossly out of focus, but you might be able to see enough.

It was then covered and left in the bakehouse for about 1.5 hours.

It's now 9:30am. Proofed dough in the basket on top of a silicone baking sheet (like a re-usable baking parchment)

Meanwhile half an hour earlier I turned the oven on to 250°C and put a pizza stone in it.

I flip the dough out onto the sheet and make 3 slashes over it. Nothing fancy here - not looking for an "ear" just making sure that the dough will spread out in a direction perpendicular to the slashes, so rather than a round it comes out as a fat oval (which my customers seem to prefer for making sandwiches, etc.)

I use a peel to transfer it into the oven onto the stone and throw a cupful of water into the tray at the bottom.

This is a cheap electric fan oven.

After 12 minutes I open the oven, remove the silicone sheet (I don't have to, but have always done so) and turn the bread round (the oven doesn't bake evenly)

Close the door, turn the heat down to 210°C and leave it for another 24 minutes.

Baked loaf. Cooling down.

And of-course what you all want is the porn-shot - the crumb!

There it is.

There are are uneven holes - that's mostly due to lack of regular stretch and folds. Note also the holes are not big holes - big holes don't hold as much butter/jam/marmalade/honey. You want bigger glossy holes - well, add more water. (This recipe has an overall hydration of just 63%)

It's also not very sour - in-fact you might be hard pressed to tell. If you want it more sour then let it ferment longer (and prove longer, but you'll need to proof it in a cooler place) and/or build the starter over a longer period of time. I think the addition of wholemeal really makes a change to it too. It still looks like a white loaf though and passes the cold butter test - even fresh out of the oven as that was.

So there you go. The Buckfastleigh Sourdough - a good daily bread made with just 3 ingredients; flour, water, salt.

Hope you enjoy and are not feeling too disappointed if you though you needed a lifetime of arcane and esoteric knowledge required to make sourdough. It's just bread.

-Gordon

Decided to do another easy sourdough post - did one a while back on my own site, but after some discussion here where I posted a recipe which the person who started that thread had a bit of a disaster with, decided to give it a go with photos as I went.

So... Sourdough - I do not think there is any magic to it. I see and read many articles on how you need to look after the starter, nurture it like a child or pet, feed it, and so on. Continuing on, I see techniques for "building the starter" - extra feeds and discards at fixed time and temperature intervals, then continuing on, kneading, wetting, stretching, folding with again, more regimented intervals before shaping, proofing, scoring to a set of rules and baking it using a dutch oven, cloche, baking stone, etc. before leaving it 6 hours to cool and fully set before daring to take a knife to your item of beauty that you've sweated blood and tears over...

Here's my take; It's just bread. Get over it and just do it.

Sure - you can apply rules, you can take far more care with it that I appear to do, you can regiment the process and create rules - if what you're after is something extra special. The one loaf a week you make and you want to take pride in it and make sure its the best there is. And that's fine. I'm making basic daily sourdough bread here and for that, there is nothing special. No tricky processes, no strict timings or (within reason) temperatures.

OK - The starter. This will take you a week or so to get going from scratch and make sure it's working for you. My starters are well established and they live in the fridge. I have separate wheat and spelt (made with white flour, kept at 100% hydration) and rye (made with whatever rye I have to hand and kept at 150% hydration). I take them out of the fridge, use some directly from the jar, or use some from the jar into a bowl when I add more flour & water to make a "production" starter. Some days I need 3Kg of starter, so I have no choice...

Last night I needed 150g, so I used some directly from the jar. The jar was then topped up (75g flour, 75g water) and left in the bakehouse while I prepared the dough then put in the fridge.

This is the recipe for my Buckfastleigh Sourdough. It's a daily bread which I bake five days a week and make and sell about 25 of them a week in local shops.

• 100g stoneground wholemeal flour (organic; Marriages)
• 400g strong white flour (organic; Shipton Mill No. 4)
• 150g starter at 100% hydration
• 285g water
• 8g salt

It's Sunday evening about 9pm.

I used the starter from the jar out of the fridge. If I didn't have enough, then I'd have started with 30g starter from the fridge, added 60g flour and 60g water and left it for a few hours.

This is the dry stuff in the mixing bowl. I just separated them so you could see - wholemeal on the right, white on the left and salt in the middle. (500g flour + 8g salt) Mix these up and measure out the starter:

Add the water:

Maybe not exactly 285g but close enough. The water was directly out of the tap - my water here is chlorinated but that's fine. It was a little chilled so I added some hot to it (from the tap) I didn't check the temperature, but it felt slightly warm. (Oh look, the starter isn't floating, oh well)

Mix that up and tip it onto the bench and push it about a little more to make sure it's properly mixed and use a scraper to pull it into one shaggy blob:

This is then left, covered with the bowl for 30 minutes. Note: No kneading has happened yet.

Lets not forget the starter, so stick the jar on the scales, zero the scales and add 75g flour:

and water:

This was then stirred up and I left it in the relative warmth of the bakehouse for the next hour just to let it warm up a little to let the yeasty beasties get to know their new food source and start to get to work before I put it back in the fridge. (Incidentally, I'm making this on Sunday evening and the last time the starter was used was on Friday afternoon when I used some to create the 3Kg I needed for the Friday night knead)

Half an hour later, I take the bowl off the shaggy lump, use the scraper to tease it out to a longer "log" then knead it for about 30 seconds. Yes, 30 seconds - it's a push away with my thumbs, then roll back with fingers operation. It takes 3 or 4 of these to turn the vertical sausage into a horizontal one. I pick this up, turn it 90° and do it again. I do it 3 times in total then chaff it into a boulle shape then plonk it back into the bowl. This really did only take 30 seconds.

I stuck the thermometer into it so you could see.

That's taken less than 45 minutes with a big half hour gap in the middle. Low impact, very easy to do. I then covered it with a shower cap and left it in a (relatively) cool place in the downstairs kitchen - which was at about 18°C.

I split this into two blog entries just to keep the size and loading time down - on to part 2!

-Gordon