Sourdough Part 0 - Intro

I’ve been making sourdough since before the pandemic. Here’s an introduction.

Sourdough Loaves

Sourdough bread is bread that is leavened using a living yeast colony, instead of commercially packaged yeast. It creates a bread that is chewy and crusty, with a pleasing sour flavour. Interestingly, the slight acidity built in a sourdough loaf that makes it taste so good also inhibits mold growth, so it lasts longer!

Making a loaf of sourdough bread is a slow process (I start Friday night and bake Sunday morning). It takes a little more effort than a regular yeast loaf, and some patience, but the results are worthwhile.

Some of my sourdough experiments so far:

  • bread - obviously!
  • focaccia - didn’t turn out too well - the recipe I used called for a lot of starter and it tasted very sour and left a weird filmy taste/texture on the tongue.
  • waffles - amazing - fluffy and the sour/sweet balance was lovely!
  • pancakes - not so amazing - again, the sourdough flavour comes through too strongly.
  • discard cakes - See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVx2oFFptG0 I haven’t been successful at all at this yet.

Equipment

There is a lot of specialized equipment out there, but don’t let that scare you! When I started I already owned:

  • A digital kitchen scale - flour in particular is very hard to measure reliably by volume, but also flour absorbs humidity, so the flour/water ratio in a given batch of dough needs to be adjusted no matter what mass you started with, so you can live without one to start out.
  • large and small mixing bowls - for mixing and proofing. Everyone has mixing bowls?
  • a board scraper (pastry cutter - it has lots of names) a rectangular hunk of steel with a wooden handle.
  • mason jars and lids (for starter and “levain”) - we buy pasta sauce in mason jars, and lids from Canadian Tire. But any used jar that is large enough will do!
  • cotton kitchen towels - again, who doesn’t have these?
  • a cast iron dutch oven - I own three, but that’s another show - as Alton Brown would say. And sourdough loaves can be baked on a baking sheet with or without steam - you’ll just get a different rise.

The rest I improvised. In particular, most sourdough loaves are formed into a loaf and then placed in a banneton (proofing basket) and stored in the fridge overnight - I saw a suggestion online that a parchment-lined bowl works well enough, and that’s what I did for the first few weeks until I decided to buy my own bannetons online.

Coming up next - sourdough starters!