Plan The Ritual Ahead of Time
If anyone wishes to make sourdough bread, planning the baking ritual is not an optional extra. Decide on the ritual programme the day before. When are you going to mix the dough, allow sufficient time for two proves, for how long etc. Plus fitting in whatever else you may need to do that day. You have to be willing to come to the service of the dough, to partly surrender your liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in order to nurture the holy holes of sourdough.
Ideal Conditions for at Ritual
Assemble the best ingredients for your sourdough making ritual. It is important to use organic unbleached flours, unrefined sea salt and sugar. This isn't just me being all middle class precious or ecologically minded. For the sourdough process to work you need the already present natural 'yeasty substances' in the flour itself, to multiply. Ordinary mass produced highly refined plain flours, do not have these in anything like suffcient quantities, so they really will not work. You end up with a dense doughy result, the heaviest and most lifeless of breads.
Along the way you might be tempted to take short cuts by adding yoghurt cultures to compensate for any deficit. But show some self respect, everyone knows what faking it is. Things go wrong with making sourdough even for experienced bakers, not just in the early days of misshapen mishaps. Its all part of the ongoing learning curve. What to do and not do. What works with one type of flour, for instance, may not work in quite the same manner with another. Baking sourdough bread is a lifetime of experimenting with conditionality. Decide to enjoy it, or give up right now. Break open that packet yeast and make ordinary bread.
Preparation Rituals
You need to prepare an active sourdough starter. If you don't have one, then you have a weeks worth of effort in the cultivating of one. Already have your starter? Then you'll be well practised at ensuring its vitality by feeding it daily. It can be testing of one's patiuence at times, but ultimately it is worth it.
Every day throw half of your starter away. Yes, just let it go. I know this seems wasteful, but get over it, or start donating jars of your sourdough starter to the entire neighbourhood. Weigh the half of the starter that remains, add the same weight in flour and enough water to make a gloopy batter. Use lukewarm water. Water that's too hot or cold will perform thermal shock on your 'yeasty substances'. No one wants that. Knocking back its effectiveness as a starter. Leave your starter alone on a shelf in your kitchen to breed. The night before you intend to make bread don't halve the starter, but add roughly an equal weight ratio in flour and enough water to produce the gloopy batter.
Ritual Recipe
If you wake in the morning to a starter container that's bubbled over during the night, then your starter's yeast is active enough to make bread. If not, examine what the hell you've been doing with your starter. Perhaps a change of ingredients or more time to mature. Its best to make your bread soon after the starter has reached maximum frothiness. Note how much time between feeding and maximum froth it takes. Probably around 4-6 hours. Then make urgent your need to cast the sourdough spell.
The recipe I currently use is as follows: 500g strong white organic flour, 400g of starter, 3tsp of sea salt, 1 tsp unrefined sugar, one cup of lukewarm water. This will make either 2 small 400g loaves or one large. Alter the recipe quantities if need be, but roughly keep to these proportions.
The Ritual Order of Mixing
The order in which your mixing ritual proceeds is important. I learnt that adding salt and sugar to the flour before mixing in the sourdough starter is one of the things, along with water temperature, that kills yeasty substances. But mixing flour, starter and water roughly together first, and then adding the salt and sugar, does not. You may question the logic of why this simple reversal in the mixing ritual works when it's the same basic ingredients. I don't know, its something to do with chemistry. Don't ask why the sun rises in the morning, just be grateful it does.
The Kneading Ritual
Once you have formed a rudimentary dough. Prepare your work surface. Now some bakers lightly oil their work surface, others dust it with flour. Too much oil can make the dough super sticky. Too much flour can make it too dry. It depends on the particular qualities of your flour. You'll have to learn what that is through practice.
The Kneading Ritual entails compressing and stretching the dough repeatedly with your hands. Encouraging cohesion within the dough, increased elasticity and air trapped within it. Depending on how vigorous you are able to knead ( oh youthful stamina where art though now? ) it can take anywhere from 10 to 20minutes for your dough to become as smooth as a baby's bottom. When a small bit of the dough can be stretched to a thin skin, that does not tear, holds firm and is semi translucent, you have achieved the much lauded 'window pane' effect.
This is the ideal state for dough to be in by this stage in this preparation ritual. Though in reality, if after 20 minutes plus and the dough is proving a pain, and is still not a pane. I give you permission to give up, move on and abandon it to the gods of the 1st prove. With kneading, sometimes persistence triumphs. But after a reasonable amount of time kneading has passed, in my experience you gain nothing from the endurance of extra time and effort. Consider why the kneading ritual hasn't proceeded quite as it should. It may be a small adjustment to the contents or form of the preparation ritual is required. Only change one thing at a time or you'll never know what does or does not work.
Leave A Ritual Alone to Prove Itself
Once a ritual is in full flow, you just have to allow it to roll on as per your original plan. Do not be tempted to fiddle with it during. Let the proving ritual prove itself, either for good or Ill. Put your dough in a bowl, barely oiled and covered with a damp cloth. Leave it in a place where the temperature is unlikely to fluctuate, that is mildly warmish, but never sweltering hot. The 1st Prove should last approximately 3hrs. Don't hang around as if you arw waiting for a birth or a death. Go and do something else.
On your return the dough should have visibly risen. Even if it hasn't, still proceed with punching the dough flat and then folding the bread in on itself from the four directions, several times. 'Knocking it back' in this way helps improve the texture of the final bread. Your 2nd prove should take place with the dough either in a banneton or a bread loaf tin. Heavily sieve flour over a banneton to deter it sticking. For this 2nd Prove, cover and leave it for approximately 3hrs. Wash up, take a walk, fret not about what maybe happening. Treat this as if it were a magic trick. Ta Da!
Presenting The Dough Ritual
Gently upturn your banneton onto greaseproof paper on a tray . Out should pop, with a little bit of a shake perhaps, your uncooked sourdough. Hopefully, if the previous rituals have gone well you will have a springy air infused dough. Poke it gently with your finger and it should bounce back as though it were memory foam. Even if not, you may still have a perfectly acceptable, slightly dense, but flavoursome bread. Its amazing what miracles the final crucible ritual can perform.
Don't ever be disheartened if a sourdough ritual fails to meet your expectations. Let it be whatever it is, enjoy it however it has turned out. Try, as I've said before, to consider what might make it better next time. But for this time slash with a sharp knife along the top or in a cross formation, depending on the shape of your bread. This enables the dough to expand rapidly in the oven and the end result will look fabulous.
The Crucible of Ritual
An oven for sourdough is a hot 220 C. This crucible should kick start a phenomenal rise from your dough. Place a large tray in the bottom of the oven whilst its heating up. Before putting your sourdough in, pour a litre of cold water into the now super heated bottom tray. This will produce lots of steam to create a really fantastic crust on your loaf. Close the oven door. Set the timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes turn the oven down to 200 C, and continue to bake for a further 10-15 minutes. This browns and firms up the crust further, but minimises the tendency for sourdoughs to burn.
Cooling The Bread
Open the oven door and remove your bread. Tap its base. It should sound hollow and be firm. Place the bread on a wire stand to fully cool. Don't leave it on its baking tray or bag it up too soon, or you will lose the crustiness you've worked so hard to create. Stand back and admire your efforts. Just see how long you can hold off from cutting yourself a slice.
Come to love the smell of toasted sourdough in the morning.
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