January 2015
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adapted for use with an ambient room temperature of about 20 degrees
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uses existing starter
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see instructions below for making starter if none is available
- take the starter out of the fridge, there should be about 0,6L
- pour it into a bigger jar or container with about 1L capacity
- add 200g of white high grade flour, 200g of water and 1 teaspoonful of salt
- mix well & leave to work overnight
- by the morning it should be actively frothing & bubbling
- pour 350g of starter back into the smaller jar
- put it back into the fridge so that it goes dormant again
- use the remainder ~ 400g for the loaf
Mix together a total of 1Kg flour, whatever you like. I prefer either
- 600g white bread making flour
- 200g of wholemeal wheat flour
- 200g of Dinkel wholemeal flour (Spelt)
or
- 1Kg dinkel plain (nice golden loaf)
Add in:
- all the starter
- 2 teaspoonful of salt
- 500 mL water - use this to rinse the starter jar out as well
If your flour mix is about 75% wholemeal flour, you'll need more water. I find 150 mL total works well for spelt (dinkel).
If you have a bread machine, throw the whole lot into the bread machine on a dough programme. At the end it will be almost pourable, simply split it into cake tins and let it rise for about 6-8h, then bake it as below.
Mix thoroughly, then knead well for about 10 minutes. Shape into a ball and leave it to prove for about 1 hour in a suitable warm place.
- pre-heat the oven to about 30ºC
- if you will be baking in a tin, oil it lightly or with butter
- if you are baking on a tray, dust the tray lightly with flour
- knead the loaf lightly
- shape into the desired form
- with a sharp knife, score about 3mm deep
- if round, mark a cross on top
- for torpedo shapes, mark on top longitudinally
- let the loaf rise; this will take 4-6 hours
- alternatively let it rise overnight in a warm place approx 20ºC
Bake at 200ºC degrees for 30-40 minutes. convection or fan ovens will tend to be shorter. You'll need to experiment with lower temperature and longer bake times to avoid the loaf splitting. Alternatively put 2 small dishes (metal works best) with ~ 100mL water in each in the oven as it's heating up, and leave them in while baking. The extra moisture prevents the loaf cracking.
The bread can be made entirely from white or different types of flour can be added instead of the wholemeal wheaten and dinkel flours. For example a small quantity of rye or buckwheat. The 75 mls of water may have to be adjusted for different types of flour. More dinkel seems to need more water, as will all wholemeal flours.
The mixture should be fairly soft but not so soft that it is sticky - I think that it makes better bread and it rises better if it is not too dry. The optimum seems to be if it just doesn't quite stick to the hands. If the mix is too dry after kneading you can dampen it by wetting the hands and kneading a little more.
If it is desired to store the starter for long periods it can be frozen. Precool it in the fridge for a day or two then put it in the freezer. When removed from the freezer take it out and leave in the fridge for a couple of days to thaw out then go through the adding flour, water and salt routine. It can take 3 or 4 days to recover its activity. Once it is active again it can be used in the normal way.
If the quantity of starter gets too small or too large adjust the qantity of flour and water added appropriately but keep equal weights of flour and water.
The above procedure has been optimised for conditions like that in Europe where there is Central Heating in winter and Air Conditioning in summer so that the ambient room temperature is always close to 20 degrees.
To make it in places where the ambient air temperature varies the times will vary and will need to be found by experiment and adjusted accordingly. If it is warmer the starter might only need 6 to 8 hours to work instead of overnight. If it is cooler overnight might be too short. If an oven at 30ºC is not used for rising, the loaf might need to rise overnight.
- 5g Wheat bran
- 75g Organic whole meal wheat flour preferably stone ground
- 75g Organic wholemeal rye flour
- 150g White breadmaking flour
Mix together
- 5g wheat bran
- 25g wheat wholemeal flour
- 25g rye wholemeal flour
- 50g white flour
- 100g water
Leave for about 48 hours at room temperature.
Add:
- 25g wheat wholemeal flour
- 25g rye wholemeal flour
- 50g white flour
- 100 mL water
Leave for a further 48 hours at room temperature, then repeat the above but also add 1 teaspoonful of salt as a retardant. This will make about 600g of starter which should be bubbling and frothing vigorously by now and can be used as above.
Start at the point where the starter is taken out of the fridge and transferred to the bigger jar.
The aim here is to get the natural yeasts to multiply, take over the mixture and suppress other organisms. The two active components in the sourdough starter are lacto-bacillus bacteria which breaks the starch down to sugar and lactic acid (which gives the bread the “sour” flavour) and a yeast which then breaks the sugar down to alcohol and carbon dioxide gas (which makes the bread rise). Hence the use of the organic flour, as most commercial flour is sterilised and the natural yeasts have been killed. Also some milling occurs at quite high temperatures which can also kill the yeasts hence using the stone groundflour. The wheat bran has also generally not been sterilised so is a good source of the natural yeasts. It doesn't matter if the flour is not exactly as specified as long as one of the components has some natural yeast spores.
Another recipe, for cornbread, from redoak