Reader, I’ll get straight to the point. Modesty aside, there are few things left in the kitchen that I'm fearful of. After 15 years of writing about food I can knock out a decent hollandaise, and soufflé is just another kitchen supper. But sourdough I’ve always failed at. Too needy, too unreliable, too disappointing when it doesn't work. It was always more important to have bread for breakfast. But then the shops ran out of yeast.
Few foods have captured and held the attention over the past decade in the way that sourdough has. In cities all over the world, restaurants compete on their bread alone and every sourdough baker has their story. There are chefs who have taken their mothers (the fermented dough base activated by wild yeasts that creates the rise, also known as a starter or levain) to the cinema to feed them on time, and others who have smuggled them onto flights abroad. There are mothers that have been alive for hundreds of years, brought over from Eastern Europe to the New World and, currently, there are mothers being shared freely across the cooking community who are baking bread at home in numbers not seen for a century or more.
I have tried with sourdough before. I have begged mothers off bakers and had them pushed on to me by friends, but they have never thrived. In the rush of life, days, weeks just flew by and I never found time to get to know them or read their needs – I have forgotten to feed them at the right time, or left them in the fridge for too long.
With a mother, it’s a relationship, not an ingredient. She responds well to the pace we live at now. She requires you to be around, attentive and flexible. You need to watch her and feed her and be there for her when she starts to fail. Making life a whole lot easier are the London-based bakeries such as Potage, Dusty Knuckle, E5 Bakehouse, and Hobbs House Bakery are now delivering perfectly prepared sourdough starters straight to your door, while Bread Ahead is going one step further and offering a Baker's Kit containing British wheat and rye flours, fresh yeast and 100g of rye starter.
So a month ago, I committed. I slayed my last kitchen dragon, and stirred together the flour and water to make my own mother – Step One complete. And then the dance began: since then I have fed her and nursed her, dancing attendance through each day, watching, coaxing, willing. She came alive and prospered, readying herself to give. A week later, she did, and still does, every day. A loaf for us and a loaf for our neighbours. Each day there’s a slight adjustment – more rye, less water, longer in the fridge. The loaves aren’t entirely uniform, and they don’t taste the same. But there are sandwiches for lunch, croutons for soup, occasionally pizza. And always, toast for breakfast.
Baking a sourdough loaf
(or keep scrolling for a much simpler no-knead loaf)
To bake a sourdough loaf is an overnight process, and unless you get up very very early, it will not be ready for breakfast. But it’s worth it.
Day 1, in the morning
Feed the mother
45g mother (throw away the rest, or use for pizza or flatbread)
210g flour (I use 40g rye, 40g spelt, 130g strong white flour, but you can use just the white)
210g water
Mix together in a container with a loose lid, then leave somewhere warm to brew
To make a loaf
After lunch (or about 4-6 hours later), time to mix and knead:
300g of the mother you fed earlier
400g strong white flour
250g tepid water
10g fine sea salt
Mix together the mother, flour and water, then knead, either in a kitchen mixer with a dough hook, or by hand, for about 5-10 minutes until it starts to feel smoother and more elastic. Sprinkle with salt and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
Repeat the kneading for a further 5 minutes until you have a smooth, springy dough.
On a lightly floured surface, press the dough out into a rectangle, then fold it into three by bringing the shorter ends in over each other. Flip it over so that the seam size is down. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rest for half an hour. Repeat this process 2-4 times, every half an hour – you can get away with doing this all at once if you need to be away, the resulting bread just won’t have quite as much structure.
After the final folding, tip into a floured proving basket, seam side up. If you don’t have one (I don’t), sprinkle flour onto a clean tea towel and use it to line a mixing bowl. Leave to rise for about 4-6 hours or until doubled in size.
Before you go to bed:
Carefully tip your dough out of the basket/bowl, keeping the seam side up. Take the edges, pull them up at the sides and tuck them firmly down into the centre, forming a sort of seam into the bread. Go round the loaf, bringing edge to middle and pressing it in firmly about five times, so the bread has formed into a fairly tight ball or oval – depending on what shape loaf you want to end up with.
Dust a baking tray with flour and place your loaf onto it, this time seam side down. Cover it with a tea towel and leave somewhere fairly cool to rise overnight – if your kitchen is very warm, leave it in the fridge.
Day 2
In the morning, if the loaf looks very puffed up and has doubled in size, it’s ready to bake. If it still looks small and tight, leave it out on the surface to come to room temperature and relax. This can take a few hours. When it’s ready, make a couple of slashes across the bread to allow it to rise quickly in the oven – I find scissors best for this job.
Preheat your oven to as hot as it goes, 230-250℃. Put a tray of water in the bottom. When hot, place the loaf in the oven as quickly as you can so as not to release the steam and heat. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the tray of water and reduce the temperature to 200℃. Bake for another 15 minutes or until the crust is dark golden. Cool on a rack and wait till almost cool before cutting.
Recipe: no-knead bread
If you don’t have a sourdough mother yet, or aren't tempted by sourdough, here’s a recipe for no-knead bread that I have simplified to the nth degree. You barely have to get your hands dirty and even my sister can make it, which is saying something. It originated in New York’s Sullivan Street Bakery and it is as close to sourdough as you can get while still using yeast.
Makes one small loaf – you can double the quantities easily
430g strong white flour
2g (¼ teaspoon) fast-action yeast
10g fine sea salt
345g tepid water
Scant amount of oil
Any flour, semolina or polenta for dusting
You will need a medium casserole with a lid.
In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, yeast, salt and water till you have a sticky, shaggy dough. Cover with cling film or invert a plate over it so that it’s reasonably airtight. Leave overnight or for 10 or so hours (not in the fridge). It will have risen and you will see air holes in the surface. Oil your casserole then dust it with flour or semolina, coating the base generously and shaking it around the sides so that the sticky dough will be able to rise freely. Stir the dough with a spoon to release the air from it and scrape it into the pot. Cover and set aside for 1½-2 hours.
Preheat your oven to its hottest – 230-250℃ is best. Here’s the important bit: with floury hands, very gently pull the dough away from the sides of the pot and sprinkle in some extra flour around the edges where the dough touches the sides – it will rise quickly in the oven and you need to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pot. Dust the top generously with flour and replace the lid.
When the oven has fully heated up, place the pot inside and bake without opening the door for 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to 200℃, remove the lid and bake for a further 15-20 minutes until the top is golden and crusty. As soon as you can find a way to handle it, firmly bang the pot onto a hard surface to release the bread, and allow to cool on a rack till almost room temperature before cutting in to it.
Find Joanna’s planet- and lockdown-friendly recipes at howieatnow.co.uk
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