Just in case you were wondering what critters inhabit the sourdough starter on your counter . . .
Bread
How to Bake a Traditional German Rye Bread
UPDATE: I have completely revised this recipe–thanks to Dana Morgan for testing and input!
In the interest of health, I’ve focused my bread baking obsession of late on 100% or near 100% whole rye sourdough loaves. I’ve used as my guide a nicely illustrated book How to Make Bread by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. His specialty is just the sort of rustic German style breads I’ve always wanted to learn to bake. What I love in particular about his caraway rye sourdough loaf (pictured above) is the crust. Unlike most other breads you don’t slash it before tossing it in the oven. The goal is a kind of perfect imperfection–a hard, thick crust with as many fault lines as the state of California. And this is a bread that requires no kneading so you can easily fit it into a busy schedule.
Here’s how I make it (recipe based on Hadjiandreou’s caraway rye sourdough):
Sourdough Pancake Recipe
Yes, that’s a real children’s book from the 1970s.
A question came in as to what to do with extra sourdough starter. First off, check out the new way we feed our starter, which wastes a lot less flour.
But another answer is to use all that tangy delicious starter to make pancakes. For years we’ve used Nancy Silverton’s recipe. Basically, the starter fills in for the flour and milk used in standard pancake recipes. That’s all there is to it.
The only downside to the new way we feed our starter is that I don’t make these delicious sourdough pancakes anymore. You could, of course, still make them by building up more starter the night before.
But make sure that starter doesn’t get away or you may have to round up some kids to go chase it.
How To Make a Sourdough Starter
Here’s the first in a series of Root Simple how-to videos. Look for them on the blog and, soon, on your mobile thingies. I started with a little edit on how to make a sourdough starter. And I take requests–if there’s a topic for a video you’d like to see just leave a comment.
Making a sourdough starter is as simple as mixing flour and water. There’s no need for all the crazy things I’ve heard suggested: adding potatoes, grapes, yogurt and certainly not commercial yeast. And the yeast that makes sourdough happen is on the flour itself in far greater quantities than in the air.
After following the simple steps I demonstrate in this video you’ll end up with a small amount of starter that you use to “inoculate” a larger batch of starter to use in a bread recipe. Keep your starter at room temperature and feed every day. Alternately, you can put it in the fridge if you don’t want to feed it all the time. When you want to wake it up, take it out of the fridge and feed for a day or two before you bake with it.
You’ll never go back to commercial yeast once you get used to the taste of bread made with a sourdough starter.
You can download a copy of this video here.
Want to Make Bread? Get a Scale
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| Liquid measuring cup on left, dry on right. Get a scale for baking. |
The current issue of Cooks Illustrated Magazine has an interesting test of the accuracy of liquid versus dry measuring cups. When measuring flour, the dry measuring cup was up to 13% off when compared to a scale. The liquid measuring cup was even worse–26% off. When baking bread, even 13% could be the difference between a decent loaf and a hockey puck.
Surprisingly, measuring water wasn’t much better, even with the liquid cup, which was 10% off. The dry measuring cup was 23% off when measuring water. I’ve always felt a bit silly scaling water, but now I can see its importance.
For bread baking, I’ve been using an electronic scale for many years now and have had reasonably consistent results. Scaling helps me be consistent. Now if only our kitchen didn’t swing between broiling hot and drafty…