Sourdough has long been one of my absolute favourite breads (tied with dark rye, if you're interested). Give me a couple slices of sourdough, some cheese and a cup of coffee, and I am a very happy girl :) If forced to choose my last meal, it would probably be something along those lines (a bold statement, but one I stand by, nonetheless). So when I saw the sourdough recipe in my new favourite bread cookbook, Paul Hollywood's '
How to Bake', I knew I had to try it.
I've been wanting to experiment with bread starters for ages, but have always been put off because they seem like so much extra work, and rather time consuming. I'm not going to lie - they are a bit of extra work, and they are more time consuming, but definitely not enough to have warranted my prolonged hesitation. I've also long been wary of steaming my home oven, which bread bakers always suggest for the nice crusts you get on baguettes. For some inexplicable reason, I'm always waiting for things to explode in my face (even when I'm not in the kitchen - it made the chemistry bit of my PhD extra challenging...), and steaming my home oven has always seemed like a recipe for disaster.
Making the starter and using it in the Sourdough Baguette recipe that follows was a really great learning experience - it was just difficult/fiddly enough to be challenging without being stressful, and I felt the finished product was supposed to be rustic enough looking to be forgiving of little handling failings. All in all, it's definitely given me the confidence to bake more with starters and to steam bread, which is what I really wanted out of this (as well as a rather amazing sourdough, which this also, fortunately, provided).
*This is a multi-day process, so give yourself a week(ish) from creating your starter to baking the bread at the end. None of the steps in themselves are particularly time consuming, it's just lots of waiting, so don't be put off by the time frame!
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| Day 1 |
Sourdough Starter
1 kg strong white bread flour
360 mL lukewarm water
1 apple, cored and grated
(make sure your apple's organic/clean - you don't want any craziness in your bread!)
Day 1: Mix 500 g flour, water and the grated apple together very well in a bowl. Store in an airtight container, marking the height of the mixture on the outside (so you can monitor its growth). Cover in a tea-towel and leave in a cupboard for 3 days.
Day 4: Your starter should have grown if not twice, then at least a third bigger, and have some great fermenty bubbles at the top. It might stink (the fermenting apple smell is initially rather awful, but I promise it goes away by the time you use the starter). It will also be very runny, almost like a pancake batter consistency at this point. Give the mix a stir, and then discard half of it (I know it hurts to do this - it took me a while to come to terms with it too). Feed the mix by adding 250 g strong white bread flour, 170 mL water and mix well. Seal and cover again, leaving it in the cupboard for another 2 days.
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| Day 3 |
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| Day 4 |
Day 6: Your starter should have grown again - if it doesn't look any higher than the mark level, check the sides for evidence of smearing dough, as it could have already risen and sunk back. Give the mix another stir (again, forgetting about the smell!) and discard half of it. Add another 250 g strong white bread flour, 170 mL tepid water and mix well. Seal and cover again, leaving it in the cupboard for 1 day.
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| Day 6 |
Day 7: This time, when you open the container, your starter should smell more like apple cider. If you don't see bubbles or evidence of rising and sinking, your starter may not be fully mature yet. Add some more flour and water to return it to a thick pancake batter consistency, mix it well and let sit, covered, for another 24 hours. If there are bubbles, or evidence of rising/sinking along the sides, your starter is ready to use! Congratulations!
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| Day 7 |
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| Day 7 - ready to use! |
From this point on, you can store the starter in the fridge, as that slows the growth and you don't have to feed it as much. If you have friends interested in sourdoughs, you can give them some of the starter now too, as it's mature and ready to use. Just keep in mind that you'll need between 250 - 500 g starter for many recipes, so make sure you keep enough in there. Also, bring the starter out of the fridge about 24 hours (ish) before you plan to use it so that it can come completely to room temperature prior to use.
Sourdough Baguettes (makes 3)
250 g sourdough starter
375 g strong white bread flour (plus more for dusting)
175 - 225 mL lukewarm water
7 g salt
olive oil for kneading
1. Combine starter, flour and water in a large bowl, mixing until a sticky dough has formed and pulled in all the flour from the sides of the bowl.
2. Tip the dough out onto an oiled surface and knead for about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Lightly oil the bowl, return the dough to it and turn to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to sit at room temperature for 5 hours, or until doubled in size.
3. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently fold in half repeatedly, until the air is gone from the mix. Divide into 3 equal portions (each will be about 300 g), and gently shape each into sausages about 20 - 30 cm long. *This is a runny dough, so I suggest you flour your hands before handling it, and don't press too hard - the dough doesn't bounce back as quickly as, say, a whole wheat dough.
4. Cover a large cutting board/baking sheet with a tea towel and apply lots of flour to the towel. Transfer the baguette to the covered board (don't worry too much if it doesn't keep it's shape - you can fix it on the board), then place the board into a large plastic bag (I used a clear recycling bag). Fill the bag with air and then clip/seal it to keep the air in. Then let the bread prove for 12 hours, or until doubled in size.
5. Fill and boil a kettle and preheat your oven to 210C (410F), with a rack in the middle and a large empty roasting tray on the bottom. While the oven's heating, transfer your baguette to a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.
I found this part rather tricky, to be honest, as evidenced in my first photo here - the dough is runny and difficult to handle without pulling and causing it to lose its shape entirely. So what I ended up doing for baguettes 2 and 3 was gently rolling the sides in, and then roll the dough right off the board onto the baking tray. By first rolling the sides in, I was able to a) minimize the exposed unfloured/sticky surface area, b) reshape the baguette into a tighter roll, and c) get flour all over myself and the counter. It was a win-win, really!
6. Just before you put the tray in the oven, fill the roasting pan about 2/3 full with hot water. Make three large diagonal cuts along the top of the baguette, and then put the tray in and bake for 20 - 25 minutes.
*After 5 - 10 minutes, check that the water hasn't evaporated completely from the pan. If it has (only after 5 minutes, don't open the oven door in the first 5 minutes), carefully open the oven (it's full of steam, so don't burn yourself!) and fill the pan 2/3 full again. Keep an eye on the water level throughout the bake, filling when necessary.
And that's it! I know it seems fiddly and time consuming, but I promise that it's worth it - the crust on this bread was exactly, exactly right, and the sourdough taste was perfect. Thank you Paul!!
