Homemade Sourdough Bread

A couple of years ago I got it into my head that I wanted to conquer my longstanding intimidation with baking that called for yeast.  For no good reason, and for years I had stayed away from baking anything that called for yeast and rising time and punching down and second rising times and all that jazz.  One day I decided that "gosh darn it, I'm a reasonably confident baker and I can do this" and even though I wasn't eating wheat/gluten/yeast at the time, there is still something wonderfully domestic about the idea of baking bread.

I pulled out a book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and started with their basic recipe.  And I completely fell in love!  Even though I couldn't eat it, I still fell in love with bread baking and went on to try out lots of different recipes from that book.  With that easy introduction, I've since conquered my fears of yeast and regular bread baking and had lots of fun with dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, pizza dough and the like.

After Jeff and I got married a year ago, I started making a 1/2 batch of Five Minutes A Day base recipe about once a week.  It hangs out in the fridge and most often becomes pizza dough, but sometimes I just make a loaf or sandwich rolls.  Its wonderful, Jeff likes it, I like it, its fast and convenient and if you let it hang out on the counter for about 8 hours rather than the instructed 2, you get this lovely almost-sourdough flavor.

So you'd think I could leave well-enough alone.  But I can't!  Even when a recipe is awesome, I always get this itch that I could maybe do it just a little bit better.  So a few weeks ago, I started research methods for real homemade sourdough bread.  And I started playing around with my starter and trying to collect wild, airborne yeast and such.  My first loaf was so-so.  Flavor was pretty good but it was dense and heavy and the texture wasn't right.  After some tips from my friend Tarah, I cut back on the flour and let it rise overnight and this was the result of my 2nd attempt:

Even Jeff asked me if it was supposed to be that flat.  "Nope," I said.  "Its not supposed to be that flat".  The problem might have been that I was going for a free-form loaf and did not use a bread pan.  Reducing the flour made it very loose and I couldn't get the dough to hold its shape.  But here's the funny thing.  

See all those little holes?

Those holes are exactly right.  The bread, despite being very flat, had the exact texture and delicious "sourdough" flavor that I was going for.  It just didn't rise the way I wanted.  So...  I did this with it:

I enjoyed a lovely little breakfast sandwich and cut the rest into sandwich-sized squares, wrapped them up and popped them in the freezer for another time.

After a lot of hassling with this, I've decided that for me, the easier method is worth sticking to. I think it is just a good, its more versatile and its well, easier! 

If you have any interest in trying it out, HERE is my old blog post with a short video showing you how simple it can be to make your own bread.  And if you like sourdough kinds of flavor in your bread, just let it sit on the counter for about 8-10 hours before you refrigerate it.  And if you want to keep that nice flavor, leave about a cup of the old dough in the tub when you mix up a new batch.  The wild yeast that has collected will give the good flavor to your new batch.

And that's all for tonight!