Sourdough Starter

I’ve made my own live sourdough starter using the recipe in The Panera Bread Cookbook at least twice since I returned to New England. The first time I made it was as an experiment: I had some time on my hands and I wanted to see if that crazy recipe would work. And it did! Although the bread did not rise very well or have that hallmark sour taste, it was wonderful to be able to produce fresh bread pretty much whenever I wanted. I was able to bring loaves down to my parents when I visited, so they enjoyed the efforts as well. Unfortunately, a sourdough starter requires regular feedings of yeast, water, and flour to stay alive. My sourdough starter eventually died of neglect.

The second time I made it was as therapy: a friend asked me to come visit for a few days because he was going through a rough time. So I did. Since this particular friend is an awesome cook in his own right, we decided to pass our free time in the kitchen. We had a lot of laughs, and some very serious conversation. I taught him how to make paella (which he had never even had before), hummus in a blender, marinated olives, and the sourdough starter. We nicknamed the sourdough starter “Spawn” because it had grown an unbelievable amount overnight. I took just enough home with me to bake the sourdough bread recipe, but I fed the starter instead and ended up with Spawn of my own growing in my refrigerator for several months. Alas, Spawn also eventually died of neglect.

I know that summer is not the best time to be baking bread, but I really felt like I should have some good quality homemade bread for my homemade preserves. So, I pulled the cookbook and looked at the list of ingredients. All purpose flour and yeast are common items in my household. I found some semolina flour in my horde cabinet, which was probably left over from feeding Spawn. I already had plain yogurt and buttermilk left over in the refrigerator from some recent recipe testing, so it was just a matter of getting the red grapes during my next trip to the supermarket. Once that mission was accomplished, Spawn II was ready to be born!

First Stage Sourdough Starter

Making a sourdough starter is simple enough. In the first stage, you mix together all the ingredients, except the red grapes. Those MUST be unwashed because, according to the book, the soap and water will reduce the viable bacteria needed to leaven the bread. The grapes get wrapped in cheesecloth and sunk into the mixture. The whole mess is then left to ferment at room temperature for twelve hours.

Since I started mine around 9pm, I set the timer on my cell phone to remind me when it would be time to move on to the second stage. When I came back downstairs at 715am, I was greeted by the scent of yeasty goodness. The mess had swollen up over the cheesecloth bag of grapes and was happily bubbling every few seconds. It was definitely alive!!!

Second Stage Sourdough Starter

In the second stage, the first thing that needs to be done is remove the cloth wrapped grapes from the mixture. Then comes the fun part: crush the grapes in the cloth and capture the grape juice in the mixture. You stir in the grape juice, and the remaining ingredients, and then let the mixture ferment at room temperature for four hours.

Unfortunately, Spawn II had grown so much overnight that I had to transfer it to a much larger bowl. Otherwise, the second stage went smoothly. I made a mess of myself crushing the grapes in the cheesecloth, but I captured a ton of juice in the bowl, which should add a nice flavor to the starter.

Right around the 3½ hour mark, I had to leave to meet my trainer at the gym, walk the reservoir, and run some errands. So Spawn II went into the refrigerator to wait until I returned home and was ready to bake him into bread.

Sourdough Bread

Since I really wanted to try my jar of homemade Cabernet Shiraz jelly, I decided to make sourdough bread the same day that I finished my starter. Unfortunately, I would have to delay my gratification. According to the calculations that I had made in the book during a previous attempt at the recipe, two loaves of sourdough bread takes over 25 hours from start to finish!

I had a little bit of confusion with the ingredients list. It called for 1½ cups sourdough starter, so I measured Spawn II into a two-cup glass measuring cup. Later in the recipe steps, there was a note that the starter must be at room temperature. So I put the recipe on hold and let the measuring cup sit out in my kitchen for a few hours while I did other things. By the time I was ready to start the recipe again, Spawn II had grown to over two cups and was threatening to spill over the edge of the measuring cup. So my quandary was this: since the ingredient list didn’t specify 1½ cups room temperature starter, did the recipe require only 1½ cups room temperature starter or did it require whatever the 1½ cups cold starter grew into? I opted for the latter interpretation and dumped the whole mess of room temperature starter into the water and yeast mixture. Whether that was the right thing to do, only time will tell.

The recipe got deceivingly complex after I mixed in the all purpose flour and the whole wheat flour. The recipe simply says “Mix on low speed until the dough is fully developed.” Easy enough? Not really. There was a whole page and a half in the book's introduction devoted to what it means to get a dough “fully developed.” Basically, the process of development involves the creation of gluten in the dough. Properly mixed dough is fully developed, and both undermixing and overmixing causes problems. The formation of a “gluten window” when the dough is stretched between your fingers is an indication of properly developed dough. But I was working by hand, not with a mixer, so I stirred the dough until it cleaned the sides of the bowl and then stirred it a few minutes more before testing for the gluten window. I didn’t quite get one, but the bit of dough didn’t break apart when pulled between my fingers. So I figured that was good enough and set the mess in the refrigerator to ferment for 16 hours. Of course, there is a note that says you can add six to eight hours to this time for a “more intense sour flavor.” I added the extra six hours because I didn’t want to get up in the middle of the night to move on to the next step.

After fermenting the refrigerator forever, the recipe really is simple. Pull the dough out of the refrigerator and let it ferment at room temperature for six hours. Split the dough in half, shape the halves into loaves, and let the loaves proof for three hours. Bake for 30 minutes, and then cool for 30 minutes. The only glitch that I had was that I was mid-way around the reservoir when my cell phone timer barked to signal that the six-hour fermentation was complete. It took me another half hour to finish the reservoir, and yet another half hour to get home, so the dough fermented for at least an extra hour. By the time I got to it, the dough had significantly swollen.

I was tempted to cut that extra hour out of the proofing time, but I didn’t. Fortunately, the dough still rose during the three-hour proofing phase. I followed the recipe instructions and turned on the oven to preheat an hour before the proofing was done. (Between that and the canning pot for the second round of Strawberry Basil Jam, my kitchen was sweltering!) It didn’t seem to make any difference. The loaves didn’t rise while baking, but that only seemed to be an aesthetic issue.

After cooling for the absolute minimum time, I tried a portion of the warm bread with some butter. It was very good: light and moist inside with a slightly chewy crust. Despite the extra six hours of refrigeration, there wasn’t even a slight sourdough taste. It was just like a very good regular homemade bread. I put each loaf in a gallon Ziploc bag so that it wouldn’t dry out overnight. The next morning I tried a portion of my bread with the Strawberry Basil Jam that was open in the refrigerator. It was still very good. I'll try to keep Spawn II alive in my refrigerator so that I can make fresh bread whenever I want – provided that I’m willing to wait a day!