Sourdough Sunday

Ten months on after joining what seemed like the rest of the world on the sourdough bandwagon, I’m still on it - and still loving the journey!

I am still in awe of the fact that I can turn out great loaves using just flour, water and a teaspoon of salt - with hardly any hands-on time. Occasionally I’ll substitute a bit of the water with beer, milk, or chuck in a handful of poppy seeds, and from time to time I’ll do a chocolate loaf or add things like leek and feta to a plain dough. But mostly it’s just flour, water and salt, with no more than 20-30 mins of hands-on time, spread across about 24 hours.

For most of 2020 I was getting to grips with the ‘dark art’ of sourdough, learning how timings and temperature affect things etc; I started with the ‘Bake with Jack’ method and eventually branched out and gave Elaine ‘Foodbod’ Boddy’s method and recipe a go. The former is based on a mid afternoon start, room temperature proving during the day and dough in the fridge overnight - Elaine’s is based on a late afternoon or early evening start, room temperature prove overnight then into the fridge the following morning for an afternoon or evening bake. Both work equally well and I’ve now settled on Elaine’s method for the next stage of my sourdough experimenting.

Whilst there are a lot of recipes plus the basics on her website, Elaine’s first book is brilliant and has got me experimenting with different flours. It gave me the confidence to try 50% and 100% wholemeal sourdough, and now I’ve moved onto rye flour.

I’ve only ever used rye to feed my sourdough starter, so using a fair amount in a loaf was new territory! Elaine warns that a dough with rye will be much stickier, so use less than the specified 150g if unsure. I followed that guidance for my first attempt and her description of how the dough would feel and handle, were 100% spot on - and it turned out a really good loaf!

Today I needed to mix a dough so decided to try the rye loaf but with the full quota of rye flour (eek!). It’s sticky alright, and you do look at it and wonder what on earth you’ve started!

I usually go for a nice long slash in the dough to get an uplifted ‘ear’ on my loaf but this time played around and scored a nice geometric pattern - in the hope, I thought, of the steam from inside escaping fairly evenly through the matrix of slashes. In the end it bust out only one one side on the top...but a couple of places underneath too! 

I was a bit concerned when I lifted my enamel roaster from the oven - it felt heavier than usual.....was I going to have a bread brick on my hands? 

You can’t cut into sourdough til it’s fully cooled or it negatively affects the texture of the finished loaf, so there was a good couple of hours’ wait til I could see how the crumb was.....but as (almost) ever, it was fine! 

So the lesson is, don’t be afraid to experiment - try something new occasionally!

So with that loaf in the (bread) bag awaiting tomorrow’s breakfast, my next experiment is already ‘brewing’..... Elaine’s rye sourdough focaccia!