Sourdough; notes from lecture and info gathered

Back in the good, safer days of the shutdown (funny how we thought that was rock bottom, but little did we know…) when everyone was making sourdough, Noah was just as caught up in the craze. I, on the other hand, had no interest in it but was definitely happy to be along for the ride. We ate a lot of sandwiches and tartines and tuna melts, and certain days we’d polish off a whole loaf in one go. A pound of butter sat on our counter at all times, and dwindled at an alarming pace. Good times.

Now that the trend has died down somewhat, I finally made my first loaves. It took several days to revive Breadward, who has been in a deep sleep since we moved. Only a few small bubbles for a few days, barely clinging onto life. But now he’s eating flour with glee and churning out some loaves.

This is not a recipe review, but I guess just a documentation? Noah has made this recipe a number of different ways. This is the most recent iteration, which came after our friend Danny, bread baker at Tartine!, gave us a 2 hour 400-level lecture, building on the 101 class that Amber taught us in the early days of March. I also referred to a few videos put out by my old chef at Union Loafers at Weeds & Sardines - I learned lots from the way he thinks about R&D when I worked for him, and I really enjoy his videos.

There is no information to take as truth here (except for Danny’s words I guess, that’s gospel). This is just a page out of a notebook or something. A snapshot in time of everything we’ve done so far with this recipe, the only one we’ve made this many times in this household.

For ONE loaf:

Revive starter: Until Breadward, I had never maintained a healthy starter for bread. We always had starters in my restaurants, but the bread we baked mostly used it for flavor instead of depending solely on it for rise, so there wasn’t much active care involved aside from making sure it doesn’t starve to death.

My old boss Ted, who I got the starter from, told me while I was running out the door that he does a feed of 50g starter:100g flour:100g water. I found it to grow too uncontrollably at that rate, and it was very unpredictable. But when pulling a cold started out of a long dormant period in the fridge, I found that my Breadward really liked big feeds to wake it up, otherwise it’d stay lifeless for days and days.

Amber had suggested we feed him 3x a day every 8 hours, 50g starter:23g flour:27g water. I think the more frequent, smaller feeds work well to keep him regular and predictable. There is way to much confusing literature and all sorts of variables I don’t understand, but whenever we feed him 3x a day, regularly, for one whole day, the next day he is pretty much ready to go. Not too acidic, not too alcoholic, not multiplying too fast or too slow. Foolproof, it seems, if you will.

In summary, give big feeds out of fridge to get Breadward started, then when seeing signs of life, feed 3x a day at regular intervals until he is showing consistent activity.

Making the damn bread:

Hour 0: Starter refreshment and autolyse - According to my notes from Danny’s lecture, he said to autolyse separately from starter refreshment to “keep the bread from becoming too acidic” and not to conflate the flour hydration and starter eating process, or it will inhibit gluten formation?? (I’m not sure exactly why).

Starter refreshment:

60g starter, 30g water, 30g flour

Autolyse:

350g water, 450g bread flour, 50g whole wheat (we’ve been using rye)

Hour 2:

Float test - take a blob of starter, drop it in a container of water a few inches deep to see if it floats easily on top. If yes, move on, if not, wait longer.

Combine: starter + dough + 50g water; might take some pinching and squeezing between fingers.

Once dough becomes homogeneous again, add 10g fine grained salt.

Knead with dough hook with kitchenaid for 2 minutes on low + 2 minutes on high. - Danny told us to build initial strength by slapping and kneading in a bowl by hand which is, I feel like, really hard to do for beginners cuz we have no idea how to do it effectively. Brian kneads it with machine in his video and I think it really does work well to build strength.

Transfer to clean bowl, and cover.

+30min

Give the dough a few turns in the bowl, and turn the whole blob over so the folded side is down again. Dip hands in water.

Danny says in order to increase hydration, just measure out your desired (right now we’re at 80%, so if I want to aim for 84%, I’d measure out 20g more water, and pour a little and fold it in at each fold until “it doesn’t want to take it anymore” which I have no idea how to tell.)

+30min (hour 3.25 maybe)

Give the dough a few turns again. It should be pretty shiny at the point with the kneading by machine.

Check back in about 30min again to see if it needs another fold; it might. Danny’s words were “it sort of looks like it’s pushing away from the edge of the bowl” which I didn’t understand at first, but it sort of looks like the blob is still maintaining a little tension even after it relaxes into the bowl’s shape? Like the bubble deflates but there is still a skin, a meniscus of some sort on the edge. I don’t know how to tell if it’s “just right” or I’ve folded it too much but I think there is noticeable difference.

If no fold, let proof for 2-3 more hours.

Hour 5-6

Check with float test on the dough, trying to deflate it as little as possible. It does look noticeably bigger. Sometimes I have to put it in the sun, because an air conditioned living room in the summer is just not warm enough. Some places say the float test will lie to you, but I don’t know. I still can’t get my desired very open crumb structure so who knows.

If it’s ready, preshape. This only makes one loaf lol.

Preshaping is very important I feel like. It’s really obvious if I don’t do it well, because the resulting dough will be noticeably unevenly distributed in weight and tension even if it’s in a ball…. I should practice with dead dough.

Let it relax again for 20-30min, then shape for real. Lots of videos. Need more practice to be comfortable.

Place in a bowl or a banneton and proof on the counter until it gains like 50% volume, and put it in the fridge uncovered to retard. - This one I’m not really sure… to cover or not to cover, what is proofed enough? I’m seeing some who say cover or it’ll form a skin, or uncover because you don’t want it to stick, and it won’t be rising anymore in the fridge. Some people who use this recipe expect it to rise more in the fridge and don’t do a counter proof? I don’t know. More research needed.

Next day:

At least 12 hours of fridge retardation later, bake.

Preheat oven at 500F for 1hr, 30min of which with the dutch oven. Bake with parchment paper. I saw someone cut out a circle the exact shape of the dutch oven’s surface + 2 little strips of handles, and I LOVED IT. I did it and it was so much better than how the folded parchment would push it into the dough.

The bread tastes v good, but I want more airy holes and more custardy texture inside. Maybe 1000 more loaves to go before I achieve that :(
There are lots more from our Facetime chat that I took notes on, but one day when that knowledge is applicable to me, I’ll look back on it and post more about it. Right now that info doesn’t mean as much as it can… someday.