Sourdough bread

My first successful sourdough loaf

I have made bread for 15 years for my family, in a bread machine. I throw in the ingredients as I go to bed and awake to a beautiful fresh and preservative/additive free loaf. It is quite challenging to make all the lunchbox sandwiches not as doorsteps, as the bread is hard to slice when warm. It's quicker and cheaper than shop bought too, as we don't have a large freezer. I could sit and eat my half white half wholemeal bread all day. However, as the baking resurgence gathers pace, I have had an increasing need to investigate all this sourdough bakery, or bread made with no added yeast. Sourdough is made from leaven, a flour and water batter that cultivates the natural yeasts in the air. Allegedly every culture aquires a different "taste" from it's surroundings. I have had the odd slice of sourdough in a restaurant but I have never bought a loaf, the time invested in a loaf has to be paid for and my home made bread in the machine is just fine. Well that was my excuse.

But the challenge niggled away, as not much defeats me baking wise. Sure macarons were a heck of a challenge but I can  make a passable batch now. A couple of years ago I made a sourdough starter, dividing and feeding it but now I know I was not precise enough, and it obviously went off, or I used too much expired ferment and the taste of the loaf was just revolting, I also didn't feed it enough flour. If that's what home made sourdough tastes like I was not interested. Skip two years and I happen to see Vanessa Kimbell, the sourdough queen, was offering 10 prizes of  her sourdough starter culture on twitter, she uses a starter that is over 100 years old and originated from the South of France. How romantic! I retweeted, commented on her blog and thought of it no more until she emailed me the next day that I was a lucky winner. You would think I had won the lottery. It really made my day.

I set to researching online, every recipe and video seemed to demonstrate a totally different method, many totally contradicting each other. For some the sourdough starter needs to be refreshed and used 8-12 hours later when most active, and others say at least 24 hours after being refreshed. I had a week to prepare myself, so I bought a round banneton proving basket from the Kitchen shop in Clifton, Bristol, they are also available at Bakery Bits. I also bought a Mason Cash baking stone and set too seasoning it. Last Saturday this lovely package arrived, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string with a very helpful instruction sheet from Vanessa on how to keep and nurture my starter.

I made a 1:1 starter by refreshing the sample. Mix 200g organic flour with 200g (or 200ml) water, preferably filtered, boiled and cooled or stood for a day and add 2 tablespoons of the culture and stir. I keep mine in a kilner jar or Vanessa recommends a stoneware jar. I put the rest of the culture, labelled, in the freezer just in case. It's best to use rye flour for every other refresh. I put the starter in the fridge after a day, as I wasn't baking until today (Friday). Yesterday morning (Thursday) I refreshed the starter and left to stand for 8-12 hours, ie until after work. I used this Hobbs House You Tube as the basic recipe, adding on and adapting bits I had read from River Cottage Bread book, and Carl Legge has helped me a lot with detailed tips and tricks and patient advice on twitter. Carl is the author of the Permaculture Kitchen. 

How I made my first sourdough loaf recipe:

460g Strong White Bread flour
300g soughdough starter
10g seasalt
230ml warm water

I measured the water and weighed it in the jug and then added the correct weight of starter, which floats when it is active. The rest of the starter went back in the fridge for next time.

I then added the water/sourdough leaven to the flour and salt in a large bowl and worked it together, I didn't have the specialist bread scraper so I used a wooden spoon and then I oiled my hands and delved in. I turned out onto a lightly oiled work surface, you don't want to be adding extra flour. It is sticky, but you just knead as well as you can for 10-15 minutes until the dough is much easier to handle.

Form into a ball and plop into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with cling film. Place in airing cupboard or warm place for an hour. Remove.

Stretch the dough out and fold into thirds, pinching the edges closed to trap air, form into tight ball and back in the airing cupboard covered again for another hour. Repeat 1-2 times  more and the last time I placed the tightly worked ball of dough (after sprinkling with rye flour) into a very well floured (rye flour again) banneton basket, placed in a plastic bag and left in the fridge overnight for 12 hours until doubled in size, it doesn't matter a bit less or more time. In the morning it looked like this:

I had also sprinkled some rye flour on top.

I preheated the oven with the baking stone in from cold at the maximum temperature 230 degrees in my fan oven, for 40 minutes. At the same time I took my bread basket out of the fridge so the dough came up to room temperature before baking. I carefully turned and eased the bread out onto the stone, and cut the top with scissors, apparantly an authentic baker has a grignette. Don't they look gruesome?! Slashing the dough is important so the steam can escape and the sourdough puff up without restriction. Get the stone (using oven gloves!) back into the oven quickly and bake for 30-40 minutes, some say spray the oven with water but I flicked in some water. Some cover with a large preheated oven proof pan or iron casserole, or a special (expensive) Dutch oven, a baking stone with terracotta dome lid. The ultimate dream is a bread oven.

 My loaf had 35 minutes, I turned at 20 minutes as my fan oven is uneven. It looks fantastic!

 I put it on a wire rack and looked at it cooling and tweeted my excitement for half an hour.

 

I decided to eat my salad I had made for lunch whilst I waited. Some sourdough aficionados say the bread should be totally cold before eating. sorry, that was impossible.

 I dived in. Here is the "crumb" shot. It should technically be holier, but Carl said it was very good for a first attempt. More folding and a slightly wetter dough will give a holier crumb (like the edge holes), but then it is harder to handle. Next time....

I slathered a slice in butter and devoured. It was amazing, a crisp and crunchy crust, tasty and very slightly chewy on the inside, none of the harsh bitter taste of my initial attempts two years ago. The faintest slight tang. Two more slices followed. sourdough is supposed to keep for up to a week, my bread machine bread is best eaten the same day so I will report back, if any of it is left!

I have a feeling I am going to have to substantially up my bike miles, and restrict bread to one loaf a week!

How fabulous is social media? My sourdough has been inspired by the help, generosity and kindness of artisan bakers like Carl Legge, Vanessa Kimbell, River Cottage and the Fabulous Baker Boys amongst others. Thank you all.

Red Onion Marmalade

I am finally getting a few things prepared for Christmas, it has been a bit of a roller coaster week. Finally we exchanged on our much loved family house of 15 years in gorgeous Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, where our girls grew up and went to school. We have already moved to Somerset, in October, but it has felt very transitory as we can only be in this house for 4 months. At least now we are certain ours is sold and we can buy somewhere to call home again. I put some jars in the oven with an inch of water in each for half an hour.

However home is where your family are, and everyone arrives "home" next Friday for 2 weeks, so we are a complete roost again. We go from 3 to 6 adults in this house, it is quite small but it is home, for now. I can finally get my head around cooking and preparing for Christmas, well after the small matter of packing up the rest of our belongings this weekend to go into storage on Monday, and cleaning our "old" house. I detest the selling system here in England, nobody has any comeback on a sale as it is not binding until about a week before the move happens, so you can't plan. Thankfully, as we just need our things to go into storage sometime next week, and not a coordinated move on a particular day, I could nab the one free slot with the removal company not charging a king's ransom! We were thinking we were going to have to do all of it ourselves at one point, a steep drive and a piano...hummmmmm!

We had been assured the exchange was happening every day for the last 2 weeks, no chain was involved, and every couple of days there was another excuse, but on Wednesday I was assured for the nth time it was happening today so I set about making red onion marmalade as distraction therapy. It is a good job it takes a while....on a freezing frosty day it is a good way of warming the house up by having a comforting pot bubbling on the stove. Lots of red Christmassy colours; gingham jars, red onions, red wine, balsamic vinegar and chillis.

It was a mish mash of several recipes including Sarah Raven's in her garden cook book and a Good Food magazine one online. I peeled and finely choppped a good kilo or so of red onions, almost filling my largest Le Creuset casserole. A very good glug of sunflower and olive oils went in first.

I then sweated the onions for about 40 minutes, stirring regularly. I added about 150g brown sugar, choppped garlic, a shake of chilli flakes, seasoning, some whole cloves and thyme and sweated a bit more, what a lovely phrase! Then about 6 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar went in and half a bottle of the cheapest red wine you can find. In my case I always make sure I bring lots back from France as cooking with wine that cost €1 a bottle is not as extravagant. Then you bubble and bubble and stir and it is not too much trouble at all for another 30-40 minutes or so until very soft and thikened. Jars out of the oven and empty the water and then in goes ladlefuls of your red onion marmalade. Well it would if the ladle was smaller than the jar, it goes everywhere. The solicitor rang at this point to say that we were exchanging in five minutes if that was OK with us, ohh heck! I put the tops on tightly straight away, I don't bother with wax discs (shock horror 'elf and safety) and try and wipe the sticky gloop up off the jars as well as I can. When cold I put on my labels, I found some clip art last year and just print them off on Avery labels, replace the clip art for whatever it is you are making. That should be enough for all the lovely cold gammon and turkey for the next few weeks! Pity, our new house wont have a pantry either, I've always fancied having a pantry or a cellar. in reality it won't last that long anyway.

..and crochet has also been my distraction therapy. I finished my Vintage Granny last night, more about that soon.