No-nonsense Sourdough, as easy as 1, 2, 3

/ April 17, 2015

I got so cross at a comment in this month’s BBC Good Food magazine that I simply had to respond with a rant. Oh no, not again! some of you will think. And rightly so – after all, it’s my first time co-hosting Angie’s weekly Fiesta Friday party, and the last thing you need is a grumpy co-host banging on and on about something you couldn’t care less about. Even better news is that I won’t be alone: The amazing Loretta, whose blog has been taking me on a right Safari of the Mind in the last year, is giving me a helping hand. Check out her incredible foods and travels: we both celebrated our first anniversary last week, but Loretta did so with a right firework: a Hyderabadi chicken biryani. Guess what we will be having for dinner soon … Anyway, at the core of a great party are great guests, and the beauty of Fiesta Fridays is that everybody is welcome: simply pop in at Angie’s Fiesta Friday blog and bring along a lovely dish or a story you’d like to share. What you bring along is up to you – as long as you link the post up to the blog and to the event’s co-hosts: this will remind us of our duties and we will make sure to take a peek and have a chat with you! It’s a wonderful way to get to know other bloggers – make sure you have a look around, visit other guests and leave a comment, as you would in a real party. You’ll be surprised at the amazing foods you’ll encounter from some of the most exciting bloggers from all over the world, really. It’s a hell of a party. I’ll be bringing along one of my sourdough breads – the perfect party food, really. But also my angry response to the throwaway comment in the Good Food magazine that anybody who’d ever ‘dabbled in sourdough’ would find  ‘that it can take over your life – all that feeding and cosseting’. Now for someone who’s been ‘dabbing in sourdough’ for a few years, I have to point out that I never ‘cosset’ and only feed my starter if I absolutely have to. All that hiring a ‘sourdough minder’ when you go on holidays, and throwing away parts of it is – in my humble opinion – a waste of your time and of perfectly good food: surely all those bakers and farmers in the olden days had better things to do than to hire a nanny to mind their starter? And as for regularly discarding a part of their starter … somehow, with all those famines and wars ravishing central Europe in the last hundreds of years, I cannot believe it. sourdough couronne detail For this glorious bread you only need bread flour and water, and time: you’ll need to begin by making your own starter, which takes just over a week – that’s 14 minutes’ worth of adding flour and water and mixing it, and a lot of time to eat, sleep, work and play in between. Check out my simple starter recipe – my first post ever! – to see how easy it is! Once you got your starter, you’ve got it for good. Every time you want to make a loaf you ‘feed’ it: simply add a cup of flour and 1/2 a cup of water, stir it, cover it, and leave it to get on with it. 8 hours later it will have doubled in size: take away as much as you need for your recipe and pop the rest into the fridge for the next time. No need to talk to it, take it out for walks or feed and discard anything. Just forget about it until the urge to make another loaf hits you – up to two months later it will still be usable. In fact, I completely forgot mine. When I took it out, at least 2 months after I had fed it the last time, some of the liquid had come to the top of the starter, looking a little dodgy:Sourdough starter But as it all smelled great (yeasty, a bit like beer – trust me: you’ll smell straightaway when it’s gone off!) I simply fed it and waited. Within 8 hours, the cultures were back, alive and kicking, and the starter was ready to use. As for the bread itself – the first bread recipe I ever posted – this is all you need:sourdough couronne ingedients 1 cup starter, 3 cups plain bread flour, 1 cup water, a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon dried active yeast. As easy as 1,2,3, surely! sourdough couronne dough Simply dilute the yeast in the water and mix t until it is diluted; after a few minutes it will start bubbling. Knead in all the remaining ingredients until it all comes nicely together. Not too stiff and not too runny. Cover the ball and let it rest for about 2-3 hours or until it has roughly doubled in size. This is called the first ‘proofing’. When your dough is ready, knock it back by kneading it a little, then form it into the shape you fancy. For Angie’s party, I decided to bake a couronne, a crown-shaped loaf. I split the dough into 8 pieces, which I formed into neat little balls and placed in a circle on a sheet of baking parchment. The parchment will help the crown to retain its shape when I place it in the oven. Cover and rest for another 30 minutes or so, the time you’ll need to fire up your oven. That’s your second proofing, in case you were wondering. Heat the oven to 250C / 480F. For best results, bake your bread in a large cast-iron casserole pot, like a Dutch oven, which you heat up inside the oven, as you would your baking stone or sheet: they need to be well hot before you place your bread in or on it! Once they’re all piping hot, remove the pot or sheet and place your bread on it. Now ‘score’ it, which means you cut along the bread where you would like it to expand:sourdough couronne scored Use a sharp serrated knife for it and cut at an angle, as if lifting a flap: this will help the bread opening in a nice flap, looking incredibly professional. Close the lid (if using the pot) and place the bread in the oven. If you’re using a stone or a baking sheet, throw 1/2 cup of water onto the sides of the oven before closing the door. Reduce the heat to 230C / 440F and bake the couronne for ca. 35 minutes, a round loaf for 40-45 minutes. It is done when the bottom of the bread sounds hollow when you tap it.sourdough couronne in dutch oven Remove the bread from the oven to cool – remove the lid of your pot at this stage, otherwise it’ll get all soggy. How much time did it take altogether, you might ask, still wondering about all those rumours about sourdough? Well, apart from around 3 1/2 hours’ resting and ca. 40 minutes baking, you actually only spent 20 minutes or so on the kneading, forming, scoring and placing it into the oven. If you are at work in the daytime, pop the dough or shaped bread into the fridge to prove: that way, you can extend the resting periods as the cold will slow down the yeasts. You’ll end up with a much more pronounced sourdough flavour for your finished loaf, which is a positive side effect! Not exactly an insane amount of time, is it?sourdough couronne 1 Probably the same as if you had been using a ready-bought bread mix. Just not as delicious. And look at that texture: sourdough couronne texture So, get going. Once you’ve made two or three of them, you’ll feel ready to experiment: replace some of the flour with rye or spelt, wholemeal or malthouse. Add seeds – sunflower, sesame – nuts or oats. You’ll know by then how the dough needs to feel, you might want to add water or flour to get the consistency just right. And by right I mean the way you like it: a wetter dough makes for a flatter but more airy loaf, as opposed to a higher loaf that might be a little more dense. It’s your call. Intrigued? I hope so! Why not visit our Fiesta Friday site and sample a few of the delicacies on offer? That might inspire you to try out something new – and who knows, you might even be publishing your first sourdough loaf in time for next week’s party … Fiesta Friday Badge Button Click to join

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89 thoughts on “No-nonsense Sourdough, as easy as 1, 2, 3”

  2. You’re definitely allowed a rant Ginger… and rightly so, how dare they! :)….I’m allowed to rave though, your bread is to die for…Love the crunch that come across the screen, all I’d need is butter and nothing more. The sourdough flavor would be the only thing I’d want to savor, no covering it up with jam or peanut butter or anything to mask that flavor. Gorgeous really, and thanks for being my co-hosting partner today, it looks like the party is already heating up. Catch you here and there 🙂

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    • Thank you, Johanne! I am still chuckling about your comments on Loretta’s cheesecake post – if I had met my dentist after my root canal treatment I’d have downgraded him into the luggage storage area 😉

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  4. I loveeeeee all of the information you’ve given us here!!!! You’ve just un-scared me from trying sourdough… which I LOVEEEE by the way…. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!!!! I can’t wait to do it. This post made me laugh 😉 I am happy to know I won’t have to take my starter dough for walks, the dog is enough!!! 😉

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    • There’s so much hype and hysteria doing the rounds about sourdough – I suppose if everybody realised how easy it was there’s be no fancy bakeries and posh-sounding recipes …
      Give it a try and share your results with us at FF!

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    • I’ve never actually managed to kill a starter. Yet. I chucked one out once because I had absolutely forgotten in in the fridge … I didn’t even check …

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  7. What a beautiful crumb, and lovely shaping! And I’m so happy to hear that someone else “neglects” their starter too! I have, I’m afraid, let it get to the point where there is mold on top (shhh…forget that as soon as you’ve read it!!), which is usually around 4 months for me, so I just scoop a bit from the very bottom of the jar and refresh it from there.
    This does mean, however, I am one of the people who discards starter–not when I’m using my starter regularly, but after four months, I do end up discarding most of it!

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  9. How funny, I read that article too!!! I really hoped to learn something from that publication, the loaf of bread on the front cover promised so much…I learn far more from my fellow bloggers!!
    Your bread looks perfect 🙂 happy Fiesta Friday xxx

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  10. Ginger thank you so much for cohosting! I have a starter that I need to revive that the wonderful Selma sent me. It already has a name so I guess I’ve already babied it but I still need to revive it. This beautiful sourdough is just gorgeous! Thank you for taking the guess work out of it. I don’t have much experience with sourdough yet. Happy FF!

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  11. Your bread looks so beautiful – love the ring shape! And rant away – I read something similar in the Guardian – the comments were just ridiculous. Well, it is their loss!! Enjoy co-hosting and Happy Fiesta Friday.

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    • I think I know which article you are talking about – I even wrote a comment on in there and then, just because it annoyed me so much. It would be great if people realised how easy and how delicious homemade bread is, and how therapeutic. Let’s reclaim it from the hipsters 😉

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  12. I cannot get enough of bread, and sourdough is one of my favorites. Thanks so much for sharing (and co-hosting) this week at FF! 🙂

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    • You’re welcome – I absolutely loved your contributions, Judie – I wish we could have a bbq this weekend, but the thought of catching pneumonia … London summers and all that… 😉

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  15. This bread looks awesome Ginger, I love sourdough! I need to make another starter, I had one but accidentally left it uncovered on the side overnight and woke up to it covered in flies, oops! When I first started with mine I did all the faffing with feeding and discarding and I’m soooo glad there’s people like you to tell us we really don’t need to do that! So rant away!
    Have fun co hosting!

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    • Thank you, Amanda – do give it a try! I can already picture your beautiful photographs of someone tearing off a chunk … 😉 Have a wonderful weekend!

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    • I’d love to have the energy to ‘dress’ my pictures more, with props and stuff. But when I’m done cooking or baking I just want to get it over and done with so I can eat 😉

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  22. perfect perfect – the third ingredient is the problem TIME!! But am tempted to try I usually make my sourdough with ready made starters – a quick query for you did you take the photos on your kitchen floor – those tiles remind me of the old granite floor I used to have in a kitchen I loved

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  23. I am so excited about this! Making Sourdough has been on my to do list and have been intimidated by the starter so many times! The first time I made it the starter didn’t work and ended up making Ciabatta instead… Now I REALLY want to give it a go!! 😀

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  24. Hi!
    This sounds so easy, I might actually have to give it a try! 😀
    I remember back in school there was sour dough going around that was named “Hermann”. In the beginning, it was all about resting and feeding and once the first excitement died off, there was no way you could bake that much bread, so you needed to find people to give some of the dough to, but eventually everyone already had his own “Hermann” at home and you had to chuck out most of the dough… Such a waste! I lost interest and never heard of it again, but now you really got me interested, especially if you can really just leave it in the fridge for a couple of weeks unattended – too nice!
    I’ll let you know how it turned out – I’ll have to find a name for him or her first though! 😉

    Have a baketastic day,
    Your Backdirndl

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    • I remember the Hermann, Backdirndl! And jes, it became a right pain in the backside over time … The good news with this starter is that you don’t feed it unless you want to make a bread – no need to pester friends or force-feed elderly relatives 😉
      Looking forward to the end result!

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  25. Beautiful bread and photos!!! Still thinking about making my first sourdough bread – working up to it slowly! Thank you for the extra inspiration! 🙂

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  26. Ginger,
    If I could only reach and get some of that perfect sourdough bread! The texture of that yummy bread is making me drool….I can almost taste it. My family would love me so much more if I could make that bread, so I have to try making it:)

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  31. I’ve always wanted to try making sourdough, especially after seeing Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall make it on River Cottage. Im just not confident in getting a starter going. Will have to give a go with your method. Thank for sharing Ginger!

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  33. The bread looks delicious and you make it look so easy 🙂 I might even give it a go! I like the idea of making your own sourdough starter!

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  36. Ginger, this is such an excellent post! I love how practical you are about this and that you ranted a bit about all the waste & babysitting and such, although I never knew people hired sourdough nannies to come in! So funny! I have been trying to eat less bread but this looks so tempting!

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  37. That is a beautiful, beautiful thing! 🙂 I have never ventured into the sourdough world, but it’s on the bucket list! I wonder if my catsitter would also sit the starter….seems like with all the pet hotels and spas popping up in NYC, a sourdough hostel can’t be far off?! 🙂

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  38. Ok, you’ve convinced me to give sourdough another try. And I even got help from Selma; she sent me her starter. I don’t know what else I’m waiting for! That bread is beautiful!! And the texture!! Thank you so much for bringing this to FF. I’m inspired!! And thanks for co-hosting. You and Loretta did such a wonderful job you’ll just have to do it again soon!! 🙂

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