Adventures with Sourdough

When my Secret Santa (aka Helen) gave me a big hardback booked titled “Bread and Butter” for Xmas, I knew I had to face up to the challenge. Sourdough. The ultimate in bread making. Something I’d heard plenty about but never attempted.

I was up for the challenge because I LOVE bread. And a good artisan bread, full of holes and chewiness is completely irresistible. But, let’s be clear, making a loaf of sourdough is not a question of following a recipe. It’s a project. It’s like deciding to get a pet.

You might think this is a bit of an exaggeration but it’s not. To make sourdough you need to develop then maintain a live starter. I have friends who travelled all around France last year with their starter for fear it would die if they left it behind. And now that I have my starter, Effie, I totally get it. Yes, starters, like pets, have names. Mine is called Effie.

The book said the starter would take around 6 days to develop but that wasn’t the case. January in Spain with no central heating, mine took around 3 weeks. Three weeks of daily feeding. Luckily, unlike a dog, sourdough starter just requires a diet of flour and water. And I say ‘just’, but actually, what happens when you mix flour and water is nothing short of miraculous. Yes, the blobs turn into gluey paste and stick to the sponge and clog up your sink and pipes. That’s the annoying part not the miraculous part. The miraculous bit is that the mixture ferments and produces a whole host of microbes which grow and bubble and tell you when they are hungry. You actually get to know how your starter is feeling just by looking at it.

And that is where it all starts. Once your starter is strong and healthy and smelling lovely and yeasty, you can make bread. And all that is required to make the most amazing bread is more flour and water and a tiny bit of salt.

“Was it easy?” asked my son Saul when I Whatsapped him, ecstatic, a photo of my first successful loaves. “Easy? No. It’s taken me over 3 weeks”. Three weeks, about 30 YouTube videos, bread making websites and a few desperate consultations (thank you Chris and Macarena). But oh my….I was so excited.

Sourdough requires time and planning. You have to know you are going to be around most of the day and the following morning to make your bread. You don’t have to do much – you just have to be there at regular intervals to stretch and fold the dough but it’s a long process. It isn’t for everyone, obviously but actually, within a short time, I find it’s no longer such an effort. I’ve developed a routine of keeping Effie in the fridge and feeding and making bread once a week. The bread freezes really well and tastes equally delicious toasted.

(Yes, that’s pretty fancy but just toast and butter is perfect too)

So, is it worth the effort? Yes, for me, right now it is because even the loaves that look like they are going to bomb come out tasting amazing and better than anything I can buy. Satisfaction and pleasure – pure and simple.

If you have scrolled down here to check out the recipe then I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m at the beginning of this sourdough adventure, still learning, still ironing out problems, still striving to make that perfect loaf with the perfect ‘crumb’ but if you want to give it a try, these are some of the links that help me. Recipes and techniques vary considerably as you will see, as well as baking methods. I follow the original book recipe but get hints from all these others. Find what works for you in your environment and stick to it!

Joshua Weissman

The Fresh Loaf

Wild Yeast

Chef John’s sourdough starter

P.S. The one little personal discovery I have made is that baking the bread in my clay tagine works brilliantly. Perfect for keeping the steam inside and the bread moist and chewy!