Blog/August 2018/Aug 10th

August 10th

Baby update: they’re still completely beautiful! Don’t worry, I won’t keep posting pictures of them; but I do find it hard to control myself…

This week, I finally reached sourdough nirvana. I’m sorry to report to the very kind person who gave me round bannetons to shape my loaves: I still can’t manage to get the bread to leave the form without tearing itself apart. So I’ve resorted to plain-old loaf-pans, with much better success. Some have asked how to make sourdough at home, and where I got the starter, so sit back and read Ron’s Easy Sourdough process:

The Starter

Don’t bother buying pre-made starter; within a week or so you’ll have your own, at almost no cost. Take a clean glass jar with a lid — preferably one which is taller than it is wide — and put 1/4 cup of whole rye flour (or whole wheat flour) in it. Add 1/4 cup of plain tap water. Stir until smooth, cover, and let sit at room temperature. You can boil the water if you like (and cool to room-temperature before adding!), but I haven’t found much difference in the result.

Note: don’t use “white flour”, and in particular don’t use any flour which is “bleached”. You want to incorporate whatever flora naturally occur on the grain, as well as the nutrients it contains on the husk etc. So “whole-grain” is what you want, for a successful starter culture.

Note: you’re encouraging the growth of certain naturally-occurring yeasts and bacteria. You want them to grow in your starter. Fortunately, they’re pretty much everywhere — you just need to give them an excuse to grow.

For the next several days, add 1/4 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of water to your budding starter plantation. After the second day you might see some bubbles form (or you might not). Don’t get too excited yet! The process takes time to stabilize the culture.

After three or four days, you’ll have accumulated a fair amount of goop, possibly bubbly, maybe having an off smell of alcohol or yeast. Now you start taking out a 1/2 cup of the material and discarding it, and adding back the 1/4 cup of flour and water. Keep it up for about a week.

At that time, you should be able to discern a nice subtle frothiness in the mixture, and it should smell pleasantly yeasty. If you have black or green stuff growing there, toss the lot and disinfect the jar and start over.

Store in the refrigerator (unless you’re making bread every day). Once a week, remove 1/2 cup or so and replenish; this is ‘feeding’ the mixture, and it’s all you ever need to do to keep it healthy.

The Bread

Once you have a starter, you’re ready to, er, start.

The process is really, really, simple and easy! I recommend using a mixer if you have one (especially if you have a sturdy one), simply because it is easier to deal with a sticky dough with a mixer. But if you haven’t got one, don’t worry.

Take 1/4 cup of the starter (and replenish what you took!). Put it in the (mixer, or mixing) bowl and add 1 cup of whole rye (or wheat) flour and 1 cup of water. Stir it around to get it incorporated (e.g. no lumps of starter). Cover w/ cling-wrap or a towel or lid, and let it sit at room temperature for a few hours.

This step “activates” the starter and gets it powered-up to do its thing. It should be bubbly after a few hours; if not, let it sit until it is bubbly.

Next: in the mixer (preferably; by hand otherwise) add in 2 cups of bread flour and 1 cup of whole wheat (or rye if you like: it will be more sticky), and about 1.5 cups of water. Mix carefully until fully incorporated. You’re aiming for a dough which is soft and somewhat sticky, not a stiff dough, so add more water if needed depending on your flour and climate etc.

Let the dough sit at room temperature, covered, in the bowl, for an hour or so. This is the “hydration” phase, where the flour and water and starter all meld together and start forming gluten. There is no need to knead!

In the meantime, dissolve 2 tsps of salt in 1/4 cup of hot water.

After the dough has hung out for an hour or so, add in the salt water and incorporate it. If you like, you can knead it a bit now (or let it mix in the mixer for a minute).

Take the dough, in the bowl, cover it and put it in the refrigerator overnight. That’s right, you just let it sit.

This lets it ferment very slowly and helps give it the sour flavor you want to achieve. The longer you let it sit, the better.

The next morning, plop the dough onto a floured surface and fold it a few times. The dough should be very soft, and pretty sticky. You’ll want to oil your hands to keep them from sticking, and also oil your implements (scrapers etc) so they don’t stick. I’ve found that the dough will roll out nicely with a rolling-pin at this stage. So you can roll it out a bit and then pick up one edge, pull it away from the body of the dough, and then fold over the top of the dough. Do that on all four sides, and repeat a few times until the dough starts holding a shape. Then you can shape it into whatever shape you like, and put it in the oiled baking form to rise.

Let the dough rise at room-temperature. It will take time, perhaps all day; the longer it takes, the better the end result will be.

Heat your oven as hot as it will go (450F/250C or whatever). Do not use “convection”, but rather use bottom-heat if you can. Once the oven is at temperature, put the bread in to bake. If you like, you can slash the top of the loaf with a very sharp oiled knife. That helps control the expansion of the loaf, but it’s not really necessary.

Leave the bread in the oven at least 40 minutes. Do not peek, don’t get worried if it gets toasty-looking. You want it to be thoroughly baked, and it will probably take 50 minutes or so even at the highest oven setting.

When it’s done, take it out and unmold it onto a cooling-rack. Let it cool for at least an hour before cutting it.

Congratulations! You just made some amazing bread!

Jewish note: the starter is what’s known as שאור (seʼor) in Hebrew. Come Passover, you need to get rid of all traces of it and start over after the holiday.

Other stuff

There’s now a petition to install LeBron James as Secretary of Education. Really.

After last shabbat, our guests were kind enough to inform me why some countries drive on the left and some on the right. It’s actually quite interesting reading.

I was super busy with 8th this week; fixing all outstanding reported issues and working on new features for the next release. Things are progressing very nicely, and I hope to make the next release in a couple weeks (at least, before the holidays!). But I won’t be making voting-software with it!

The weather has been very mild for Israeli summer, so we’re well pleased with that.

This shabbat it’s just the three of us, dining on:
homemade ḥalla, barbecued ribs, meatloaf, various salatim, probably loads of other things, and fruit.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ḥodesh ṭov!

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