Simply Sourdough - A Tutorial

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"The chief things for man's life is water and bread, and clothing, and a house to cover shame." Ecclesiasticus XXIX, 27. Today we are sharing our recipe for the staff of life, that foodstuff that man has had for thousands of years, bread. But in our day and age bread seems to be on the list of things not to eat. It seems there may be many reasons for that as the type of bread many tend to eat in our time is different from what use to be eaten. In our previous blog post on Milling At Home Joseph Husslein S.J. Ph D. shows how just by the way wheat is milled takes our "staff of life" and turns it into something other than a healthful food stuff. 

Going down Father Fahey's list of 12 Factors of Proper Nutrition we are going to touch on numbers 10 and 11 today with our sourdough tutorial: proper preparation of food and proper cooking of food.

What is so special about sourdough bread? According to the all knowing Wikipedia, "Sourdough is the fermentation of dough using naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeast." Prior to the use of commercial yeast (bread yeast typically purchased for bread making) sourdough starter was how families baked their daily bread. Sourdough starter uses a natural leaving that takes the naturally occurring yeast from the air when flour and water are mixed together. This is what makes the bread rise in a sour dough recipe. Most sourdough breads purchased or served in a restaurant do not use this method but add other agents to mimic the flavor of sourdough.

Why is all of this important? Sourdough starter not only makes the bread rise without having to purchase a commercial man made yeast but it also helps to make bread more nutritional. The lactobacilli (the yeasts and bacterias) digest the sugars in the wheat, they give off gas in the process making the bubbles in the starter/bread dough which make it rise. When these lactobacilli eat the sugars they are "pre-digesting" the bread for us which makes it easier for us to digest. It also prepares the nutrients in the wheat for us so that we get more out of our wheat than we would have had these bacteria and yeasts not started the job for us. This study from the US National Library of Medicine shows that souring the bead reduces gluten and may be helpful to those who are gluten intolerant. In our own personal experience we don't have the bloating that is associated with eating yeasted bread and the whole wheat sourdough also ties us over to the next meal much longer. When we have gone back to a commercial yeasted bread we feel as if we didn't eat much and continue to feel hungry, in return eating more.

So without further ado, we present our family sourdough recipe. This recipe has been a labor of love in the making for about 4 years. One downside to sourdough is that it isn't a scientifically made commercial yeast. Meaning that it isn't a straight forward consistent item to use in the kitchen. It has been said that sourdough making is an art and there are as many ways to use this lovely starter as there are recipes in Russia for borsch, recipes in the US for potato salad and recipes in Bulgaria for Shopska Salad (as every country has its dish! Our children are adopted from these…). With that I will say this recipe might not work for every starter and every situation but it is what has been working for our family for 6 months almost without fail after 4 years of many sourdough bricks! I must also send a thank you to all those family members who have helped give tips along the way! To my sister-in-laws, cousin and aunt who put up with all my questioning and probing. This recipe is a combination of all of those tips and much reading and research. 

Grind your Wheat!
​(Or Sub Store bought)

~*~ Important to note that this recipe starts the night before I want to bake bread, more on timing options will be discussed at the end of this post.  ~*~

download printable Recipe here

Step 1- Grind 6 cups Wheat or skip this step for pre ground flour
This recipe makes two large loaves. I grind about 6 cups of organic hard red wheat berries which I order from Azure Standard but any hard red wheat will do. If you are buying pre ground flour from the store (Winco, Roth's, Fred Myer) I would recommend getting Bob's Red Mill brand of whole wheat.

​To grind wheat please follow the directions that came with the mill that you have. We started out with a hand crank Wondermill Jr. mostly because we thought it would be great to have something that didn't require power. Then the official wheat grinder became tired and so we invested in our lovely electric wheat grinder, the Nutrimill, which we have had about 6 years now.

Measure out the starter

Step 2- Measure out 1 1/2 cups Sourdough Starter
After trying to make our own starter from scratch (just flour and water, feeding equal amounts for a week) we opted to just purchase a starter from Cultures for Health. In this tutorial we are using their Whole Wheat Desem Starter which has worked great for us. I've killed it twice I think but always save some, dehydrated, for back up. Either follow the directions for the Cultures for Health starter, make your own or get some from a friend. Perhaps another post will be up on all those details. For the purpose of this tutorial though have your starter ready to go, fed at least 1-3 days before. We like to keep ours in the fridge. I take out what I need then feed it equal parts flour and water enough to fill my canning jar and put it right back in the fridge.

Measure out 1 to 1 1/2 cups of sourdough starter into a large glass bowl (sourdough will eat stuff stuck in plastic bowls and metal is a debatable material).

Add flour, starter and water

Step 3- Add 2 cups flour, 2 cups purified water to the 1 1/2 cups sourdough starter

To the bowl which you placed your sourdough starter add 2 cups of your ground or bought whole wheat flour and 2 cups of filtered or purified water. City water/tap water won't work well for this as the chorine that is added and other chemicals isn't good for the sourdough starter and may kill the only thing you have to rise your bread. Mix until well incorporated. Let this set for 8-12 hours. I mix mine before bed about 9:30 pm the night BEFORE I want to bake. Then the lactobacilli have plenty of time to do their thing (eat those sugars and digest the gluten). At about 9:30 am the next morning I move on. This step takes about 5-10 minutes. I cover my bowl with an Uber lid or any reusable bowl lid that doesn't seal tight like these. I was using plastic wrap but when you make bread every day or every other day it just seemed like an unnecessary waste. A cloth towel works ok but in the summer fruit flies snuck their way in.

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Mix in the remainder of ingredients

Step 4- Add 1/4 cup raw honey, 2 cups of filtered water, 2 tsp sea salt & 6-7 cups of whole wheat flour.

After the sponge (mix of water, flour, starter) has sat 8-12 hours I dump it into my Kitchen Aid mixer and add 2 cups of filtered water (again the starter likes pure water), 1/4 cup of raw honey (the best kind to use with the most nutrition, local if possible), and 2 tsp. of sea salt (we prefer RealSalt full of minerals and no additives). I give the mixer a little short run to blend that together then add my 6-7 cups of flour. The flour amount depends on how watery your starter was, how fresh your flour is (more flour if fresh less if bought) and the how warm or cold the weather is. The dough should be wet but shouldn't make a squishy should when you pinch it. Sourdough prefers a wet dough and you can usually add some later in the process but you don't want it too wet or the bread won't rise well. The fourth picture in the set above shows how it should look. This will probably be more wet than a dough that is made with yeast at this point. The whole wheat takes a while to soak up the water so it will need to be more wet.

Once you have your flour mixed in I rinse out the large bowl that was used for the sponge and give it a quick wipe down with a clean cloth napkin. Pour about 1 1/2 tbl. of oil in the bowl to grease it. Then transfer the dough from the mixer into that large bowl. I cover it with my Uber lid and let it sit about 4 hours. The timing on this will also depend on the warmth or coolness of the house. On cold days it might go longer than 4 hours though generally that doesn't happen with ours. On hot summer days I have to watch it, it could go in an hour or so. If its really cold sometimes it gets to snug close to the wood stove. It can also be placed in the fridge if the baker will be busy longer than 4 hours. (Read I ran to town and didn't make it back ;)  ). The coolness of the fridge will slowdown the fermenting process and give the baker some extra time.

At any rate, no matter your condition you are essentially looking for your dough to rise double in size for it to be ready.

Knead dough and shape

Step 5- Knead dough, shape and place in bread pans.

After your dough has doubled in size (for me, the size of the bowl I use and my Uber lid this means when it pushes the Uber lid off the bowl). Once that happens I get out my trusty, could-not-do-without, Pampered Chef Pastry Mat (one of my favorite kitchen tools can you tell?!) I dump out my dough on an oiled mat (if my dough is too wet I use flour instead of oil) and use a pastry knife to cut my dough in half so I have equal parts for two loaves (or close to equal). 

I knead the dough, flattening it out and folding it over itself until it has a nice smooth elastic feeling to it. I estimate this takes less than 5 minutes for each ball of dough. The sourdough starter does such a good job at digesting the gluten that it almost kneads it for me. I usually knead one half let it rest while I knead the other. Let the second set rest while I shape the other into a loaf.

To shape the loaf I turn the ball of dough on its smooth top side, and then flatten it and shape it with my fingers into a rectangle. I then slowly roll from the top to the front making sure to push down slightly as I roll to keep air bubbles from showing up and creating holes in the loaf when it bakes.

Once it is rolled and folded I tuck in the ends, flip it over and make sure the seam is sealed by pinching it together. Then rub some olive oil on the top to keep it from drying out and in the summer it keeps the fruit flies off. I grease my Good Cook Stoneware Bread pans with olive oil and place the shaped loaves in the pans to rise a second time. While the Good Cook Stoneware is working great for us they are wearing down on me after 4+ years and I have some Pampered Chef Stoneware Bread Pans on my wish list! Why stoneware? It cooks really well, very evenly, holds heat well, makes a nice crispy golden brown outside and its made natural materials that won't leach into the food that is baking in it. Just a few reasons we love stoneware!

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Bake that beautiful staff of life

Step 6- Bake both loaves at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

For our average oven this tempature and time are perfect, every time. Everyones ovens are different though so a good tempature for bread is about 190 degrees on a meat thermometer. When the bread is done I remove it and then turn it out of the pan onto a baking rack to let it cool. I brush some olive oil over the top for a little less rustic look and it browns the top a bit while it cools.

​You could slice right away but the longer it has the cool the better. Hot bread (which is really hard not to cut right into!) will be super moist and will mush together when you try to cut it. A couple of hours would probably be the perfect amount of time to wait. This recipe makes a great sandwich bread. Its very hearty, healthy and simple!

Not everyone is home all day long to bake bread and I admit that timing was really a lot of what took me 4 years to figure this out. For those that work baking many loaves on a Saturday and then freezing them (pre sliced) would be an option. One could also place the dough while in the first rise stage (in the bowl before shaping) in the fridge and then take out when home from work to shape for the last rise. What ever schedule works for your family this bread is a healthful blessing!

download the printable recipe here