Sourdough Bread

Mention sourdough, and most people think of San Francisco. But once upon on a time, all bread was made this way. Not just a specific type of bread, sourdough is a process for leavening bread using "wild" yeast from the natural environment. Until commercial yeast became available in the 19th century, sourdough was the only way to go.

The science of bread making relies on two relatively simple phenomena: The tendency of certain proteins found in wheat, when mixed with water, to form a web of rubbery filaments called gluten that have the capacity to expand as they trap gas in tiny pockets; and the tendency of yeast, if given a moist lump of flour to chew on, to digest starch and burp out carbon dioxide gas. Since yeast is to the botanical world what dust is to closets -- found practically everywhere, even the air -- these two phenomena were bound to collide sooner or later.

Put simply, if you mix flour and water in a bowl and leave it out on your kitchen counter, as surely as cheese grows moldy, it will become infected with yeast. Over time, if fed regular daily additions of flour and water, the mix will develop into a culture called a starter that can be used to leaven bread. You can try this at home (see below).

To bake, mix a portion of the starter with flour to form dough and leave it out to ferment. As it ferments, the yeast digests the starch and produces gas. The gluten traps the gas, causing the dough to rise as if inflated by tiny balloons. Baking with commercial yeast works the same way, except that with sourdough, everything happens more slowly, and at the lower temperatures to which natural yeast is attuned.

Once considered rustic or primitive, sourdough is the perfect antidote to a fast-paced, commercialized society--following its own rhythm, sourdough can be coerced, but not forced. Every sourdough loaf is a unique product of the local environment, as distinct as the bakeshop or kitchen counter on which the starter grows. You can't make San Francisco sourdough in Chicago, because the climate and yeast are different. But there are a growing number of places where you can go to try out the local version, made the traditional way. In Chicago, try Red Hen Bakery at 1623 N. Milwaukee, or the Swedish Bakery at 5348 N. Clark Street.

To create your own starter at home:

1. To begin, put a few cups of white flour into a bowl and add enough water to match the consitency of pancake batter. Cover the bowl with cheesecloth or plastic wrap and leave it out on your counter.

2. After a day or two, natural yeast from the air infects the starter. The yeast digests the starch in the flour, giving off carbon dioxide and alcohol. For now, the gas just dissipates, and the alcohol can be poured off or mixed back in. The real goal at this point is to infect the starter with yeast.

3. Continue to add flour and water daily so the yeast has plenty of food. I've read books that claim you can generate an active starter in three days, but in my experience a week is more realistic. The starter improves over time, and the more you feed it, the happier it is.

4. Along with the yeast, certain bacteria called lactobacilli also infect the starter. These bacteria also feed on the flour, producing lactic and acetic acids, which give the starter its characteristic sour flavor.

5. When you're ready to bake, take a portion of the starter, add flour and water according to your recipe, and mix to form dough.

6. Each time you bake, reserve a portion of the starter for next time, and continue to feed it once per day if kept at room temperature, or weekly if kept in the refrigerator. Starters have been kept alive in this manner indefinitely, for decades if not centuries.

When you're ready to bake, try sourdough focaccia. If you're like me and your starter isn't all that active because you don't feed it often enough, you can supplement with a small amount of commercial yeast.

A common question is why the starter doesn't go bad. The idea of storing the same smelly bowl of dough year after year is counterintuitive if not downright gross. How can you be sure it won't infect your whole kitchen?

The answer is that, like prospectors staking their claims, microbes play rough when it comes to defending their turf. Different types of microorganisms thrive in different environments. The yeast strains commonly found in sourdough coexist particularly well with the acid-producing lactobacilli bacteria that give the bread its flavor, because the yeast can't metabolize a certain sugar that the bacteria need (maltose). The acid in turn makes the starter resistant to contamination from other bacteria, most of which need a more neutral pH to survive. In a beautiful example of microbial teamwork, the yeast and lactobacilli work together to shut out other organisms.

When baking with sourdough, trust your instincts. Concentrate on the essential steps, and use your senses. Professional bakers talk about the importance of scaling ingredients, but they don't hesitate to add more flour if the dough feels too moist. This is true of any bread, but more so with sourdough, where each loaf is a unique product of the local environment.

Comments

[catherine]

Help
Please advise how one peels/pits etc. a mango. Believe it not, they are now available in our grocery store (remember the wilds where we live--we just got havarti cheese last yeat) and we love them. However, we are stuggling we how to pit them and still make them look appetizing!
Any advice,
catherine

[matt]

good article on sourdough!

[Jeanette]

About mangos...my sister in law is from guayana and had a mango tree in her backyard. You want the mango to be the same "ripe firmness" as a plum. It should have a decent amount of red or dark orange on the peel, and the end should smell sappy. The pit is flat, and the mango follows this shape. You need to cut it from the stem end to the pointy tip; do this on each side, and you should have cut out the pit. Kids LOVE chewing on mango pits (or save it for yourself). Now lay the peel side down, and score the mango into cubes; don't cut through the peel. Push the peel up and the cubes seperate and make it easy to eat!

[Smitha]

Hi,

I came to your site looking for a bread recipe without yeast and I loved your detailed instructions on creating the starter. However, I am at a loss on how much started should I add. Is there a recipe that you can provide for making bread with this starter.
Many Thanks,
Smitha