BREAD AND BAKING

Intro Sourdough bread - The Culture What you need? A note on flour Mmaking a sourdough culture Handling your starter Rrefreshing your starter A note on quantities Recipes Where to buy what you need

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My recipes for reliable, delicious and simple sourdough bread - The Culture

We eat a lot of bread at home, which means quite a lot of baking. If I'm to keep that up, the recipe needs to be forgiving (in case I forget bits), simple (so that there isn't much to forget), acceptable to a range of children (so not too wholemeal, seedy or challenging!) and above all not too time-consuming . The two sourdough recipes I give here are delicious (all the children love the results) and the outcome of some weeks of testing, so I can vouch for them. I have adapted them from Whitley's book (above) and from a Paul Hollywood sourdough recipe, and altered them to suit my equipment and schedule.

I do not have a suitable food processor so I do all my kneading by hand, but if you have a Kenwood Chef or similar which can do the hard work for you, then do make use of it.

What you need - Ingredients

For the bread you will need strong wheat flour ( Where to buy what you want), water and salt. You can choose white, wholemeal (volkoren) or multigrain (meergranen), it's up to you.

For the starters (the sourdough cultures containing natural yeasts) you will need either rye flour, or an apple (preferably organic).

A note on flour

For making any bread you need what in the UK is termed 'strong' flour. This has a higher protein content (12-14%, roughly) than the 'normal' (plain or self-raising) flour you see on supermarket shelves (from which virtually all the protein-containing germ of the grain has been removed, leaving around 10%). The crucial protein we need for bread is gluten; on kneading, this forms a lovely elastic framework which stretches with the gases our yeast generates during the rising process. This allows our bread to rise, and then hardens on baking to preserve the crumb structure. Strong flour is not available here in most supermarkets (our own local Jumbo and AH do not have it) although they do carry 'bread mix'. This is roller-milled flour from which most of the germ has been removed by the milling process, then subsequently partially replaced (in addition to yeast, improvers (chemicals to speed things up) and the like) and it is not suitable for making sourdough bread.

Strong does not necessarily mean wholemeal, so strong white and strong wholemeal are both available, and UK brands are described as such. In this country I have found that not all flours list the protein content, but you are pretty safe with stoneground flour. This is then subsequently sieved to remove coarser parts and make it whiter, and you will typically find 'volkoren tarwemeel' (wholemeal wheat flour) and 'tarwemeel' (white wheat flour) on offer here. Wholemeal flour tends to absorb slightly more water than white, and the recipes below give water quantities for white flour, so you might need a little more water if you're using wholemeal. Information about where to buy flour is in Where to buy what you want.

Making a sourdough culture

First of all you need to make your own little yeast colony. This takes a little time and moderately careful measurement. When you are doing this, remember that yeast is alive and - like us - it likes warmth but will be killed by excessive heat (unlikely in this country, mind...) and that it will be slowed to a standstill by cold. This means that you will help get things going if you work with warmish water (feels warm to your hand) and leave it out somewhere safe (not the fridge) to start working. I do not measure water temperature or worry too much about details like this, but in winter I do make sure the bread has somewhere warm and cosy to rise.

1. Wheat starter using apple
   
   You will need: 1kg bread flour, one organic apple, water.
   
   

   Day 1	Take one organic apple, grated with the skin but avoiding the core. Mix 500g flour with the apple and 360ml warmish water. Put in an airtight container, cover and leave to ferment for three days. If you mark the level on the outside of the container, you can see whether it has risen.
   Day 4	After three days it should smell sweet, a bit like cider, and will probably be a bit darker; it may have grown and may have bubbles. Discard half and add another 250g flour and 170ml water. Mix thoroughly and leave for a further two days.
   Day 6	Your starter or 'leaven' should now be pretty active, with lots of small bubbles. If it doesn't seem active, look at the side of the container to see whether it has risen up earlier and collapsed back on itself. If it's done that, then you're fine, it's active.

   
   Assuming it is active, discard half of it as before, and mix in another 250g bread flour and enough water to make it into a really wet, sloppy dough (this is probably about 250-300ml). Leave it for 12-24 hours. If it starts bubbling again during this time, then you're all set: it's ready to use! Ideally it should be thick and bubbly, almost jelly-like in its consistency, like a gelatinous batter.
   
   If you are not ready to bake now, put it in the fridge where it will slowly use up its available 'food' (the flour you have given it) and put itself to sleep for the time being. When you want to use it, you need to take it out beforehand and refresh it (see 'Refreshing your starter' below) so that it can re-activate itself. The refreshed starter will again be bubbly and ready to use.
   
2. Rye sour
   
   Although this starter is based on rye flour, the resultant bread is neither rye-flavoured nor as dense and moist as rye bread. We are just using the natural yeasts on the rye; the recipe which follows uses wheat flour so you get a wheat-based bread. It gives a slightly moister and pleasantly chewy end result than the 'apple' culture above.
   
   Like the apple version above, this takes some days.
   
   

   Day 1	Mix 25g rye flour with 50g water, stir, leave somewhere safe (with a lid on loosely, so nothing can fall into it .)
   Day 2	Add a further 25g flour and 50g warmish water, stir well, leave.
   Day 3	It will probably have bubbled up overnight and subsided again. Add a further 25g flour and 50g warmish water, stir well, leave.
   Day 4	It will have risen and sunk again overnight, and may have separated, leaving a layer of greyish water on top. Just add a further 25g flour and 50g warmish water, stir well and leave for another day or so.

   
   Congratulations! The unappealing greyish mixture you have created is a rye sourdough culture, or 'sour'. It should be pretty runny, smell sour and taste slightly acidic.
   
   At this point it is a happy thriving culture and ready to be (part) used.
   
   Like the wheat leaven, if you don't want to use it yet, you can put it in the fridge where it will keep for some time - I have left mine for weeks without it coming to any harm. When you want to use it, you will need to revive it (see Refreshing your starter below).

Handling your starter - General

Whichever initial method you used, what you should have now is a thriving culture of yeasts growing in your (rye or wheat) flour / water mixture, thanks to your regular feeding (see below). This is your raw material and can last you for months. You can use some right away (see recipes below) or you can put it away in the fridge to lie dormant for use at a later date - you can even freeze it if you want. Each time you make bread, you feed the starter and remove some to bake with, leaving some refreshed starter for next time. So long as there's nothing green and hairy growing on it, it is just fine. A grubby, grey layer of water on top and no apparent activity just means it has used up all its current supply of 'food' and has reverted to a dormant state; when 'woken' up with some food and warmth, it will be bubbling away and ready to use in no time.

Refreshing your starter

To make refreshed starter, which is what you need for baking, you need to give the yeast some more food (i.e. flour), water and warmth, then stir and leave it for a while. A vigorous culture will be bubbling away in an hour, a slightly wimpier one might take longer (a few hours) - give it time and it will work in the end. Exact quantities are not crucial, but a good rule of thumb for getting a fed and ready-to-use starter is to aim to double its weight when refreshing.

• For the rye sour, add twice as much water as flour, so (for example) if you start with 150g of old sour, you could add 50g rye flour and 100g water.
  
• For the apple/wheat leaven, add equal weights of flour and water, so given 500g of old leaven, you could add 250g flour and 250g water. This gives you 1kg of refreshed starter; for one loaf you need 500g starter, so that leaves you 500g to put back in the fridge for next time.

A note on quantities

Since the rye sour recipe uses only a relatively small amount of starter, you may not want to refresh your entire starter every time or you will end up with kilos of the stuff; on the other hand, to maintain enough culture you don't want to leave too small an amount. Aim to keep a stock of at least 200-300g starter and you should be fine. The recipe above produces 300g starter, for example, and the recipe below requires 160g of that; it would be a good idea to refresh the remaining 140g before you put it away for the next use.