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Posted in Recipes

Sour­dough Bread, Round 1

Sourdough bread making L1040571
Lindley Mills Super Sprouted Flour

There’s nothing more satis­fy­ing than baking your own loaf of bread. 

Baking bread is akin to culti­vat­ing some­thing from a seed. It took me nine days to complete my first loaf of bread from begin­ning to end. Drawing inspi­ra­tion from Tartine’s methods, a renowned bread maker, and an uncharted terri­tory in my kitchen, I embarked on this chal­lenge. It was a self-initi­ated journey, a step­ping stone to some next-level adult­hood or culi­nary wizardry. However, if this bread failed, my life would undoubt­edly take a nose­dive. The outcome would serve as a poignant reminder of my journey.

Sourdough Bread 1

After eight days of nurtur­ing, I had finally completed my sour­dough starter. A starter is the ferment­ing process that gives sour­dough its unique flavor and creates the natural wild yeast. It’s essen­tially the foun­da­tion of baking bread, and master bakers have been culti­vat­ing their starters for years, even naming them. I’ve treated my starter with the same care and atten­tion as a newborn baby, feeding it twice a day with flour and water, and closely moni­tor­ing its progress as it under­goes fermen­ta­tion and becomes filled with wild yeast.

Sourdough starter day5
The sour­dough starter, ready to build. 

On the 9th day, it was finally ready to become bread. At that point, you turn your starter into levain —which is added to flour, water, and salt and then your dough begins. You can find a real step by step which I used from The Perfect Loaf.

My inter­ac­tion with the newly formed dough was prob­a­bly the most intim­i­dat­ing aspect for me, consid­er­ing I had been watch­ing these master bakers. However, I managed to do quite well. I felt a sense of control and under­stood the tech­niques I had been study­ing for the past eight days. Before baking, let it rest in the refrigerator overnight.

Bulk fermentation

That morning, on the ninth day, I was eager to bake the dough, but I was also quite nervous about the outcome. I baked two loaves, and one came out wet, which made me realize that the dough wasn’t as strong as the other. Addi­tion­ally, I had used a differ­ent type of oven. The other loaf turned out almost perfect — a sprouted sour­dough with a great crust that I was craving. The crumb was soft and flavor­ful, and every­one in the family, even the worst critics, loved it.

Sourdough boulle organic

A big part of this project was finding and using the health­i­est ingre­di­ents I could get ahold of and since most sour­doughs don’t use super sprouted flours, I had nothing to use as an example. I sourced an organic super sprouted whole grain from Lindley Mills, a 10 gener­a­tion family owned organic mill in North Carolina. This super sprouted flour is divine and the sour­dough is so deli­cious. I had no gluten sensi­tiv­ity to it either. The bread lasted several days n the kitchen, much longer than other artisan bread I have purchased.