All Purpose Sourdough Bread

If we eat bread, we only eat true sourdough bread. This means that it has been made with only wild yeasts that exist on the grains, no added commercial yeast. Sourdough bread has many benefits over traditional bread made with commercial yeast. Here are a few good reasons to make your own:

* It breaks down gluten, making it easier to digest. Many people who have gluten intolerance find that they can eat sourdough breads.

* It pre-digests/breaks down, the sugars and starches in the grain, preventing sugar spikes and therefore helping to maintain health blood sugar levels.

* Neutralizes phytic acid, anti-nutrient present on all grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. It's ability to neutralize the phytic acid, increases the nutrients we can absorb and making it easier to digest.

* Is preserved longer due to the lactic acid fermentation.

* No funky preservatives or dough enhancers that are not natural and cause health problems.


The following recipe is adapted from Wild Yeast Blog. She has many good recipes and ideas you may wish to check out. Note, not all her recipes are sourdough only, some contain commercial yeast. Commercial yeast is toxic. Here's a good article on it. http://ranprieur.com/readings/natleavbread.html 

This is another good article discussing why you should make your own bread. "The Poisonous Truth About Our Daily Bread". 


This recipe is my go to for multiple uses. It can be made into dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, pizza, fried dough. Just get creative. It is said that using milk in sourdough recipes prevents it from the beneficial sourdough process. It will still work without milk. I would like to research that claim some more myself to be sure and understand it with some actual research to back it up. So for now I will omit the milk.

Sourdough Sandwich Bread

Ingredients:

* 422 g white flour
* 200 g whole wheat flour
* 320 g water, non-chlorinated
* 7 g salt
* 62 g salted butter at room temperature
* 30 g honey
* 411 g mature 100%-hydration starter (ratio of 1:1 water/flour by weight) (how to make a starter)

Directions:

If you have a stand mixer, fit it with a dough hook, combine all the ingredients. I do not have a stand mixer at this time, so I did this all by hand. If using a mixer, mix on low speed until all the ingredients are incorporated. It will be a wetter dough and sticky as you knead it, if you are mixing by hand. Sticky is good. It is ok for dough to stick to your hands. It takes a little getting used to but you will learn to feel the dough change and know if it is really too wet.

Continue to process the dough in the mixer, turning the speed up to medium. Work until you get a medium to high level of gluten development. I found kneading by hand took about 20 minutes. You can do a windowpane test to see if it is developed enough. If you are not familiar with it. Check out this example at Wild Yeast Blog. She does a great job with photo examples.

Once the gluten is developed, lightly oil a glass bowl or plastic container, place the dough in the bowl and cover. Set in a warm location away from drafts. Allow the dough to rise for 1 hour and then take it out and fold. Place back in the bowl, cover and allow to rise for another 1 hour and 40 minutes. Fold the dough a second time. Place back in the bowl for 20 minutes. If you are not familiar with folding dough, it is important in how your final bread comes out. So, take the time to watch a video or look up some examples. I noticed the difference of how my bread came out when I just muddled through and when I finally understood what to do. It helps to further develop the gluten. This gentleman does a great job of demonstrating.



Grease or butter two 8.5 x 4.5-inch loaf pans. Do NOT use oil or you will be digging and scraping the bread out of the pan. If you don't want to use butter you can use Spectrum Organic Shortening. I buy mine here. It is made from 100% organic expeller pressed palm oil. You can also sub it for the butter in the recipe above for the butter.

Now, I turn the dough onto a lightly oiled counter. You can use flour if you are more comfortable. I prefer oil. Divide it in half. Shape each piece into loaf, getting rid of any bubbles and place in greased pans seam side down. Cover and proof until the top of the dough has risen one to one and half inches above the edge of the pan. This should take about three hours depending on how strong your starter is and how warm the location is.

Once it is risen, place in a 400F preheat oven and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 375F and continue to bake for another 15 minutes. Your bread should be a rich golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Loosen the edges around the pan with a knife and then gently turn the bread out onto a wire cooling wrack. Allow the bread to cool completely for the best texture, ease of cutting, and shelf life.

Dinner Rolls using recipe above.

If you plan to freeze the bread to prolong it's shelf life, slice the bread once cooled, and place in a freezer safe bag. Squeeze out as much air as possible. I have made lots of bread up ahead of time and stored it in the freezer this way. It thaws nicely, and taste and texture are great. It makes it easier too not to eat a whole loaf trying not to let it go bad. This way you simply take out however many slices you will need and thaw them.

Below are pictures of various sourdough breads I have made. I plan to add the recipes at some point.

Sourdough Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns

Sourdough English Muffins

 

Caramelized Onion Sourdough

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Reviving Frozen Sourdough Starter

I hadn't been baking bread for a while, so I froze some of my sourdough starter for later use. Unless you plan to be baking at least once every two weeks, I would freeze your starter. That is the way I plan to maintain my starter. I don't bake every day or several times a week. It's easier just to freeze it and forget it. You can go on a trip and leave it in the freezer and not have to worry if your starter will still be alive when you get back. This is a great way to maintain your starter for those with very busy schedules, who just don't know when they will get the time to bake bread. I highly recommend freezing your starter in batches.

Reviving a frozen starter is very easy but first I will tell you how to freeze it. Simply feed your starter and allow it to set at room temperature for about two hours. Then divide the starter into freezer baggies. I did about two to four tablespoons per baggie. Then seal the baggie, forcing out as much air as possible. Next, place it into a second freezer baggie. This will protect it better from freezer burn. I write the date on a piece of tape or on the second baggie. Never write on a baggie that contains your food because the ink can leach into the food. Place in the freezer as flat as possible. Once it has frozen you can stack it or push it into an out of the way spot in the freezer. You can see in the picture below that I froze more than a couple tablespoons for this one and didn't lay it flat to freeze. It still worked but not as nice if you leave it flat to freeze.

To revive your frozen starter, simply choose one that has the oldest date. I keep more than one starter frozen. This assures that if you lose your fresh starter for some reason, you don't have to start over, simply take one out of the freezer and revive it. So, now take the frozen starter and leave it in it's baggies in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning, the starter should be thawed. Scrape the starter out of the baggie and place it in a jar big enough to expand to the amount of starter you plan to use. I always make more than I need and freeze a new starter.

Now, that you have your thawed starter in a jar, add an equal amount of water and flour to feed. If you had 2 tablespoons of starter, add 2 or 3 Tbsp each of water and flour. I think feeding it more than it's own volume helps it to revive better. Stir well, cover and leave at room temperature. About 4 to 5 hours later, feed it again. Again, with equal amounts of water and flour, equal to or slightly greater than the volume of the starter. Stir, cover and leave at room temperature for about another 12 to 16 hours.

 
Now there should be signs of life and increased in volume as shown in the picture above.

Feed again with equal amounts of water and flour, equal to or slightly greater than the volume of the starter. Stir, cover and leave at room temperature for 3 to 5 hours. It should have gained a lot of volume and be ready to use. It's that easy!

In the picture below I put a piece of tape so you could see how much volume it gained in such a short time.

 
This picture below shows the consistency of my starter. It's like a very thick batter. It's very wet but not too wet. Most of the time I just eyeball the flour and water to get a consistency that looks like this and I've been very happy with the bread I make with it.

 
Note: It can take up to 48 hours to revive a starter. The instructions above is what I did and it worked perfectly. My kitchen was fairly cool for the most part too. It did heat up more for the last 6 hours but it had already shown good signs of life and increasing in volume.

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Sourdough Starter

This is the starter for that I used to make the breads pictured here. I have tried making a sourdough starter with white flour and water but found that it gets a lot of the strain of bacteria called leuconostoc, which is harmless. The issue I had with it was it smelled really bad, like baby puke for a few days. They say using pineapple juice will reduce that strain or prevent it. I prefer to keep things simple though and just use good old flour and water. When I used the whole wheat flour and water mix, I did not get leuconostoc.

It's up to you what you do for a starter but do NOT use any commercial yeast. It is not true sourdough and it is not healthy. No, I am not being a "sourdough snob" as some would like to say. Commercial yeast is toxic. Here's a good article on it. http://ranprieur.com/readings/natleavbread.html This is another good article discussing why you should make your own bread. "The Poisonous Truth About Our Daily Bread".

If you prefer to purchase a ready made starter, this is a good site to buy from, as they have many heirloom starters. They have other culture starters there as well, great for making homemade yogurt.

This following recipe is adapted from the book, Bread Matters by Andrew Whitely. It is important to keep it covered so that it doesn't dry out and so that you don't get anything uninvited growing or swimming in it. It is a myth that you need to "catch" the yeast. It is already present on the grain. An important note, do NOT use tap water that has chlorine. It will keep the yeast from growing.

I use a large glass jar for my starter that gives it plenty of room to grow. It has a lid that just sets on top. Never tighten a lid on a starter container. The pressure of gases released from the yeast, can blow up a jar. Not only making a mess, but if the jar is flawed it can make it shatter. I bought my large jar at Walmart for around five or six bucks.

Wheat Leaven 

Day 1
35 g Stoneground whole wheat flour
35 g Water

Keep this mixture in a warm location. It is best to mix this in a small bowl the first two days and then move it to a larger jar. Keep it covered and mix 2 to 3 times a day. Twice is sufficient.

Day 2

35 g Stoneground whole wheat flour
35 g Water

Mix into Day 1 starter and cover, mixing at least twice a day.

Day 3
35 g Stoneground whole wheat flour
15 g Water

Reducing the water will tighten the dough up a bit and this helps the yeast grow better. I have found that if my starter is too wet it will become too acidic too fast. Bacteria grow better in wetter starter. If you ever find that your starter has become to sour, just dump some off and add more flour to water when you feed it. If it has become really sour and feeding it more flour doesn't seem to help enough, you can give it a little sugar and it should help.

Day 4

100 g Stoneground whole wheat flour
80 g Water

If you would like to make a white flour starter, white flour can be added to lighten the leaven a little at this point. If you prefer though, you can stick with wheat flour. I found it best to not add white flour until the starter was fully active.

After fermenting Day 4 starter for another 24 hrs you should have a starter that smells slightly acidic and may or may not have risen and collapsed. Mine was had what I thought was a slightly sweet smell the first few days.

If you really don't see any signs of life in your starter by Day 5, even after you have kept it in a warm place as suggested, it probably needs more time to get going. Mine needed about 7 days, if I remember correctly. Give it another refreshment by repeating day 4. If it was showing signs of life, but doesn't anymore, maybe it has become too acidic before the number of yeast cells had grow enough. If this is the case, you need to dilute it with fresh whole wheat flour, which will give it some more yeast food. So, discard all but 120 g of your starter and feed as follows:

120g Old Starter
120g Water
170g Stoneground whole wheat flour

Keep feeding it and stirring two times a day and it should spring to life within 10 days...though some people have had it go longer. If you have any issues or questions The Fresh Loaf is a good place to ask questions. I did a lot of messing around with my first batch and it finally straightened out and became a good starter.

This is a picture of my active starter. You can see how bubbly it is.

Hope it works out well for you. Remember if it's too much work to get one started, just buy one from the site listed above.

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