"Recipe"

Homemade Sourdough Bread (made with no commercial yeast!)

Some of the basic structure of the making of this bread was derived from a recipe found in Nourishing Traditions, a wonderful book from the Weston A Price Foundation.  There's many reasons I adapted it -

• whole wheat, for some reason, doesn't tend to pull in the yeast cultures as well as white bread; 
• I didn't want to pay for and order in a sourdough culture; 
• the bread tended to be very dry even before baking, and when it was done, it was even more so; 
• the bread was also heavy, and the crust was so hard it was inedible.  

Then again, maybe I'm just bad at following directions.  ...  ...  ... I'm probably just bad at following directions.

So after browsing through many other sourdough recipes, this is what I've come up with:

To make a starter for your bread-
  Day 1: Mix 1/4 c. white bread flour with clean, filtered (chlorine-free) water.  If all you have is tap water, you can draw up a glass, and leave it sit on a countertop (covered with a cloth to keep wee flies out) for at least 24 hours to let the chlorine dissipate.  I can't tell you exactly how much water you will use (it ends up being somewhere around half of a cup).  Mix these two ingredients together in a glass container (I use a large Pyrex measuring bowl)  You want the mixture to be fairly soupy, but not a watered down mess.  It should stir up about like cooked oatmeal, I guess.
   Once you've got it thoroughly mixed (I use a fork to stir it and aerate it), cover your glass bowl/dish with a dishtowel or cheesecloth to keep out unwanted foreign objects.  Leave it sit in a safe place (a warm countertop in some sunshine is ideal).

  Day 1, part two: twelve hours after that first step, and once every twelve hours after that, you'll need to add another 1/2 c flour and some water (about 1/3-1/2 cup) to your starter.  Again, you'll want it to be damp and a bit soupy.  If you check on it and see a cloudy greasy liquid on the top (called "hooch"), then you added too much water last time.  That won't hurt your starter - just pour off that excess liquid and give the starter a good stirrin'.  If the outside crust of your dough starts to look crusty when you perform your routine 12-hour check, then you will need to add a smidge more water next time.  Always give the starter a good stir with a fork or bread whisk at these 12 hour intervals to get it some air!

  By Day 5-8 (depending on how warm your kitchen has been and how much air circulation you've had), the dough will start to smell yeasty.  You should notice bubbles forming in it, and it should be trying to rise up out of your glass container in between times.  This means it is almost a teenager, and it's time for it to move on to the next step in its breadly life!

If you notice that your bowl/container is getting crusty, just transfer the dough to a different container.  I switch my dough from one bowl to the next about every other day.

Also, once the starter dough is beginning to "yeastify," I begin adding whole wheat flour, rye flour, or spelt (or any combination of the three) to the dough instead of the white flour.


Got starter? Make bread!

Remove 1 to 2 cups of starter from your bowl.  Mix it in another container with 3-1/2 c. flour (white or whole wheat, or a mix of the two), 1/2 cup of pure water, and 2 tsp sea salt (I prefer celtic!).   Depending on how much wheat you've used in this whole process, you may need to use more water to get the consistency you want.  The dough won't rise much if it is too dry.

Mix well, and cover with a dishtowel.  Leave in a warm-ish place to rise for 12 hours.

MORE WAITING?!! Yes.  This part requires quite a bit of patience.  If you want fast bread, then get you some quick-acting commercial yeast packets and a recipe from Food Network.  This is traditional shit, yo.  Gotta nurture it a little bit.

After that period of 12 hours is up, you'll take the dough and fold it over on itself... do that TWO times.  Then leave it alone again.  In the bowl. Covered.  For ANOTHER 2 to 4 hours until it doubles up in size.  If you're not getting a good rise by this stage, then you either didn't let the starter yeastify long enough before attempting some dough, or you may have too dry of a mixture.  There's various reasons that it may not rise.  Not all hope is lost, but beware that a dough that doesn't rise much will lead to a dense, heavy bread.

After that 2-4 hour wait, it's time to get to work.  Get the dough out of your bowl and onto a clean countertop.  Be careful with it.  The more you bend or shape or kneed or tear your dough, the more the proteins in it break down and change the bread.  This isn't a Stretch Armstrong, kid.  Shape your dough on the counter.  Wanting a round loaf of bread?  Make it round.  Wanting to put it in a bread pan for a more traditional loaf?  Go ahead and do that.  Once it's the way you want it (sort of), leave it alone to rise one more time.

In the meantime, though, turn your oven on to 450° F, and get an old aluminum pie pan (one that doesn't have holes in it).  Fill pie pan with as much water as it can safely hold, and put this on the bottom rack of your oven while the oven is still warming up.

Get your baking stone, if that is what you're baking the bread on.  Dust it with cornstarch so the bread doesn't stick.  Put it in the oven too, so it can be warming up.  Get some welding gloves handy.  Really.  That baking stone will be SOOOO much hotter than a pan, so if this is your first time using a baking stone, use extra caution.  I honestly handle mine with high heat welding gloves, and even that isn't enough sometimes.

After the two hours is up, and you've gotten everything preheated, carefully slide your bread stone out and transfer your bread dough to that (trying to disturb it as little as possible).  Put 'er in the oven for about 45 min.  When it's thoroughly cooked, it'll make a hollow thud when you thump the bottom of it (unless your bread is mostly wheat/rye, or unless it didn't rise much in the earlier stages).

When it's done, let it cool on your bread rack.  Easy-peasy.  Now admire what you've created!  Assuming you already had running water in your house, some pan/stone to cook the bread on, and some table salt lying around, then all you've purchased for this project was some corn starch and some flour (and it was probably fairly inexpensive).

Now, what about the rest of that starter?  You can leave it out and continue making bread with it (remember to feed it once per day by adding 1/2 to 1 cup flour and more water), or you can put it in a container and put it in the fridge.  If you put it in the fridge, remember not to seal it TOO tightly in your container, because it will still build up some pressure from the yeasting process, and it could make a big mess in your fridge if it explodes.  You won't have to feed it every day when it is in the fridge, but you'll have to feed it about once a week to keep it "alive."  I forgot about one mason jar of starter for almost a month in the back of the fridge and it was black and oily and disgusting when I found it.