A Sour Start

As a recipe developer I have come to expect that the first pass on something unknown will turn out....questionable. The stubborn perfectionist in me always holds out hope that from the start it will be amazing and perfect and delicious and that I am, unquestionably, a genius! Not quite. I must remind myself when looking at the actual finished dish as opposed to the image in my head that the process of creating a recipe is the most valuable part of the process. I remind myself often.

My current project, despite the 90 degree heat in my old house without air conditioning, is no knead sourdough bread made from a wonderful sourdough starter that was gifted to me. I love making bread and have a solid track record with both sweet and savory loaves. I have, however, never made bread from a sourdough starter instead of yeast and I have never made no knead bread. This kind of challenge is right up my alley.

The beauty of the no knead process is two fold. The first is that it cuts several steps from the traditional process and since I do have other things to do with my days (yes, days plural - bread takes time!) than fold, proof, shape and proof various stages of dough, this is perfect. The second is that all the equipment you need is a bowl, a wooden spoon, plastic wrap, parchment and an enamel coated cast iron pot. This is ideal for me since my old house also lacks in counter space and storage in the kitchen.

I started by researching no knead sourdough bread recipes online. I found a range of techniques and ingredients and settled on one based on tips from Nancy Silverton since the starter was from one of her cookbooks. I really wanted to use all starter instead of starter plus yeast so first I had to tend to my starter. I had been keeping it in the fridge so the first thing I did was to let it sit at room temperature for a while and get it all active and bubbling again. It was so warm yesterday this took only a few hours. I then mixed in a bowl some bread flour, kosher salt, honey and the starter. It looked sort of shaggy and dry, which didn't quite seem right so I mixed in a few tablespoons of water. I let it double at room temperature for 5 hours and then let it sit in the fridge overnight, as the research suggested in order to let the sourdough flavor really develop but not allow the bread to over proof and become excessively sticky.



The next morning


My dough the next morning was not quite as expected. It didn't really change at all overnight and still seemed too dry and tight. At this point there was really nothing to do to try and fix it. I knew perfection was out the window on this loaf so it was time to just wait and see what was going to happen. I let the dough stand at room temperature while I preheated my oven with the Dutch oven in it at 475 degrees F for 45 minutes. I then put a piece of parchment at the bottom of the Dutch oven and turned the dough right into the hot pot. I baked, covered, until puffed and firm and then lowered the oven temperature to 400 degrees F and finished baking, uncovered, until it was golden brown and firm when tapped.



The cooling loaf







Checking out the crumb



The bread turned out to not be a total disaster. Although it had a very crunchy crust and a wonderful sour flavor from the starter, there was too much salt and the crumb was too dense. The denseness was really no surprise since I felt the dough was itself was too dry.

Further reading leads to me believe that it all comes back to my starter. Perhaps I need to let it sit out of the fridge and feed it for a few days so that it is more aggressive? Perhaps I need to add a bit more water to my recipe as my starter may be firmer than the ones I was referencing? Is the problem as simple as the fact that I tried to make a half batch and the proportions just don't translate?

As I chew this over for a few days and read some more, at least I can be comforted by having some fresh bread to chew on as well.