I Loaf You

Well friends, it’s time to tell you about a new hobby I’ve started.  Or rather an old hobby I revisited.  You probably don’t remember, (because even Will didn’t remember) but before Julius was born I started a very short foray into sourdough making.  Bees to yeast was a logical leap (in my head at least) and there is something so ancient and wild about making bread rise by cultivating millions of micro-organisms that you can’t even see.  It’s basically magic.  Anyway, back 7 years ago I made a few loaves and then stuck the sourdough starter in the back of my fridge to feed every few weeks for a few years until the fridge saga started, and I finally had to say goodbye.

If I’m being perfectly honest I wasn’t too happy with my sourdough attempts back then and I’ve been wanting to give it another try for a while.  In my first attempts my starter never really gave my bread a good rise.  Probably, it is because I live in New England and my house is generally what normal humans would describe as cold.  (For the record I am a mostly normal human and I do think it is cold.)  Anyway, one of my BFFs started baking bread as a side project for baking pizza (he might be more crazy than I) so it was the perfect opportunity to get back into sourdough.

So this time I decided I was going to do it RIGHT.  I started with the same sourdough starter recipe as last time, and this time I put it in the warmest place in the house, on top of my oil burner.  After day 3 my starter was already starting to show signs it was starving after 24 hours.  So I did a bunch of research and decided to move it to over my hot water heater (also lots of residual heat loss from pipes) and switch to the King Arthur Flour starter method which discards half every time you feed (which makes way more sense).  The KAF method warns that your starter may not be perfect for a while.  So I patiently fed my starter twice a day… for 24 days.  On day 24 I started doing experiments.  I split my starter into 2 and started feeding each different ratios of flour:water.  I was like a mad scientist.  It seemed my liquidy starter didn’t rise a great deal, but when I used a greater amount of flour to water my starter doubled.  Oh I also moved it back from the water heater to on top of the oil burner.  I was finally ready to bake some bread…

Check out those bubbles

My starter is finally ready to be used! (In a vintage ball jar from my grandma)

While this was all going on I was accumulating sourdough discard.  I was desperately trying to keep up with baking things to prevent waste and I ended up making sourdough pancakes, sourdough biscuits, english muffin bread, english muffins, sourdough chocolate chip cookies, sourdough biscuits, sourdough buns, sourdough pizza, sourdough discard naan and… crumpets.  (Yes the British things that look like American English Muffins.)  I also went through like 4 bags of flour on creating this starter.  My entire house was a gluten free diet’s worst nightmare.  I hadn’t thought about that at the time and during the middle of all this we had a friend with celiac’s over to watch a movie.  I basically told him that nothing was safe and he could touch nothing in the kitchen.  I was sort of joking because I’d wiped down everything before he came, but then he touched the countertop where Julius sits and he was like, “so should I really wash my hands now”.  And after I moment’s hesitation I decided, “yes, it’s probably a good idea”.  I think I might have scared him.  I really hope he didn’t get sick.

Well, I finally baked a loaf of bread last weekend and it came out GREAT!  I mean it wasn’t quite perfect but it was beautiful!  This weekend I made another loaf and it was even better!!!! I’ve been using the KAF no knead sourdough (thanks to Ryan for trying 3 recipes first and telling me this was his favorite).  The second time I made it, I accidentally cooked it for 20 minutes at 500 before lowering the temperature to 450F.  I think it came out better!  So I probably will do that again (on purpose this time).  Some other tips I’ve found seem to help – I always mix my starter with liquid then add flour.  This seems to help distribute the yeast better and was something I didn’t do before.

My first loaf with my new starter!

The inside was dense in one spot! No one seemed to mind though.

Loaf attempt #2!

Yum. This bread is perfection.

Just so I remember my first loaf I accidentally let it come to room temperature in the bowl before I shaped it then plopped it directly into the dutch oven into the oven.  The second time I let it come to temperature into a basket/towel combo after shaping and then moved it to the dutch oven to bake immediately.  It was more difficult to move so I probably won’t be doing that again….