My "sourdough" workflow, comments appreciated

[Jon Savage]

These notes are for a friend with whom I'll be baking this weekend.

Bitch is a ref to my starter,

comments/concerns?

--thx

Jon

Basic naturally Leaveneåd bread workflow

(sourdough? maybe.)

--notes for bitch session; assumes you have a starter in hand--

The thing about naturally leavened bread is that it requires time and forethought. Attended work? not so much but this is not a bread you can make from start to finish in an hour or so.

Day one (my days count from evenings, you could of course use am, noon whatever)- Make a Poolish or Biga from your starter; think a fistfull of dough or so. This will be used in a day or two to levain your bread.

-Poolish is a 50/50 mixture of starter and flour +water by weight or SWAG- think loose slimeball

-Biga is starter+enough flour or water to make a fairly stiff dough - add no salt in either case as it retards yeast and lactobacilli reproduction which is the point of this exercise.

(I prefer a poolish) The Biga has a more sour result. France tends to prefer poolish while Italy tends towards Biga.

Let that sit in a covered bowl at room temperature overnight or so, it will get spongy and can now be held in the fridge for another day or two without ill effect.

At the same time put ¼ to ½ cup flour in the jar you removed the starter from (unwashed, still has remnants of starter in it) and enough water to make a creamy slurry. This should be left on the counter overnight or until quite bubbly and can then be stored in the reefer until you decide to make bread again. If you leave this in the fridge for an extended period of time it may separate, hootch on top- that’s OK just mix it all up, discard half add flour and water and leave it out loosely covered until it bubbles and wakes up. I’ve revived neglected starter after a year in the fridge this way and it revived just fine.

elapsed time 24+ hours, actual work 5-10 minutes at most.

Day 2 (or 3 or 4 if you have been busy):

Make a 60% hydration dough (flour = 100% weight, water 60%) e.g. we usually take a kilogram of flour and add 600 ml H2O + the poolish which adds a few % water to the mix. Knead by hand or in your stand mixer until it just becomes cohesive and let it rest for ½ hour (this allows some enzymes to work their magic to create sugars and also fully hydrates the dough).

Once that time elapses add 2% salt by weight or SWAG and knead for 5-7 minutes if using a mixer or if by hand a full 10-12 minutes. Depending on ambient humidity, the phase of the moon etc. you may have to add a little flour or water to achieve a good consistency.

The resulting dough ball gets a little olive oil or PAM sprayed on it, goes back into its bowl covered with shrink wrap and rests in the fridge at least overnight but up to a week (the batch above lasts us about a week for baguette, boule, pizza whatever...). You don’t want to make more than ⅓ to ½ of the capacity of your storage containers capacity of dough as otherwise it will try to escape. Actually it might try to anyway. The bitch is nothing if not vigorous.

elapsed time 48 hours to a week, actual work 30 minutes or so

Days 3-7 (Baking bread or the like):

A couple of hours before you want to make bread grab as much dough as you need from the fridge as you need, I’m assuming 2 Baguettes since that’s what we’ll do in the session so about 2 fist sized chunks of dough.

Knead these (separately) into 2 tight balls seam down using bench flour as needed let warm up covered @ room temp for an hour or two.

Start oven preheat as hot as it goes after that, also begin to form the baguette; keeping seams down. If the dough resists have a martini and let the gluten relax. Once the baguette are sufficiently formed cover and let rest while the oven continues its pre heat.

Gently place the baguette into the form (or on a peel if using a baking stone)-

grab the sharpest knife you have and slash lengthwise across the top just prior to putting them into the preheated oven. Also have ½ cup of water or so available to throw onto the floor of the oven just a few seconds after you have put the bread in- this will help oven spring. Leave the temp on max; door closed. After 10 minutes you should check and maybe rotate the loaves 180 degrees to even browning.

Check internal temp after 18ish minutes, once the interior of the loaves reaches 200F they can be set aside to cool. Do let them cool, they actually taste better after a rest.

elapsed time 72 hours to a week, actual work 40 minutes or so

Rinse and repeat with the rest of the dough if you have any left. We do pizza, focaccia (make the dough 70-75% hydration if you want foccacia), rolls, boule, pita, english muffins and such.