re: Sourdough Bread

The King Arthur starter is a good one to use if you want to make from scratch or you can just order the starter from them already to go. Just start feeding. It’s cheap.

If you are in Baton Rouge I’ll give you some of mine.

If you want to bake sourdough buy one book. Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. Learn his country bread recipe and practice until you get it right. Then you have a base sourdough recipe you can use for different breads. It’s easier to have one recipe that you can adapt rather than try to master a bunch of different ones that in the end can be made from your base. You know how it acts and knowing that gives you confidence to bake. It’s a challenge and using levain is a different game but not one that is hard.

The biggest obstacle you will find-or at least for me, is timing. I bake a lot of bread and I still scramble to get it done when I want it. I’m getting much better but there was a few times the dough wasn’t waiting to proof overnight and I baked at midnight.

When you pull a loaf out of the oven your first thought is cut open and smear butter and eat. Eat the whole loaf standing at the counter with a stick of soft butter and hot bread.

I had to go to bread rehab to make me stop that. As much as your starter being healthy and ripe means to good bread allowing it to cool does as well. Especially on your first dozen loaves while you get the feel for it. 9 out of 10 cut without cooling is gummy. Think of it as resting a piece of meat. Let the carryover heat finish cooking it so the water gets out.

Use King Arthur bread flour to start. It’s very forgiving and high in protein. It can accept a large hydration. Once you get that you can add others. Tartine uses 90% bread or strong flour and 10% whole wheat. It’s a great formula.

No need to feed your starter daily unless you are baking daily. Also no need to have large amounts of starter. You can scale up as you need. This will save you a lot of flour and mess. If I’m baking on the weekend (which I normally do) I set my starter out on the counter on Thursday night, feed Friday morning and feed again Friday night. This will keep it ripe and robust and if it peaks too early in the morning on Saturday I can refresh it and it will be ready in 3-4 hours.

True sourdough is three ingredients. Flour, salt, water. That’s it. And man you can do a thousand different loaves with those three ingredients.

Tartine Bread is a bible. I have quite a few books and all are good for something, a tip, a different flavor or something but Tartine is your textbook. You can find his recipe all over out there. It’s the gold standard that is being used.

The guy that owns Proof Bread has a good YouTube channel. Long videos but really good. The Perfect Loaf mentioned above is a good source as is Pantry Mama. King Arthur has some good recipes for yeast bread’s although I struggled with their sourdough.

Good luck and post some pictures. It’s a great craft.

Some I baked last weekend.