How To Make Sourdough Bread
I made my first loaf of sourdough bread roughly 10 years ago with the help of my father (who now owns his own bakery, Brick Oven Bakery in Northfield, Minnesota) and some well-packaged sourdough culture he carried in his suitcase. He coached me through the basic steps; I was skeptical that something made with just flour and water would turn into delicious bread — but it did, and I was hooked.
I've been slowly working on my sourdough game ever since. Bread-baking is a passion of mine — something I do when I need a break from testing chicken tikka masala and impersonating Julia Child. It takes time to coach flour and water into something as beautiful and delicious as a finished boule or batard, and that's time when I also slow down, breathe a little deeper, and relax into the process. Sourdough bread is something you learn by doing.
You're not going to make a great loaf by reading a recipe or hunkering down with a cookbook; you're going to have to get your hands in the dough, and you might have to try it a few times. Even after making sourdoughs for years, I still get bloopers, like the first loaf I made from Tartine No. 3. Stay with the process, learn to work with the ingredients, and enjoy the adventure.
Sourdough bread is made entirely using wild yeast — with a strong, active sourdough culture of wild yeast, you won't need any commercial yeast at all. Wild yeast need a little more coaxing and work a little more slowly than commercial yeast, so sourdough breads are normally mixed, shaped, and baked over the course of a day, or even multiple days. Besides giving the wild yeast time to do their job, this long, slow development time helps tease out more complex, nuanced flavors in the finished bread — far beyond those of your average loaf of sandwich bread.
While the wild yeast is certainly the star of this show, it's not actually what makes the bread sour. That distinctive sour flavor comes from two kinds of friendly bacteria — Lactobacillus and acetobacillus — which grow alongside the wild yeast in the sourdough culture and help ferment the sugars in the dough.
Also, note that sourdough breads also don't always necessarily taste sour. Depending on how you develop your starter and make your bread, the sour flavor can be quite pronounced or it can be more subtle. The recipe here strikes a balance — it's a touch sour, but it's balanced by a nice range of sweet, earthy, and yeasty flavors.
Before you can make a loaf of sourdough bread, you need to make a sourdough starter. This is a culture of flour and water for growing wild yeast and developing those bacterias. Having a "ripe," or fully developed, starter ensures a good rise and good flavor development in your sourdough bread.
You can make your own starter in about five days. On the first day, you mix flour and water into a batter, and let them sit at room temperature overnight. Wild yeast are everywhere — on the flour, in the air, on your hands — and they will quickly start to thrive in this culture. Over the next few days, you'll need to feed the yeast and bacteria by pouring off some of the culture and adding fresh flour and water.
You'll know it's ready to use to make bread when the culture becomes very bubbly within just a few hours of feeding, and when it smells sour but fresh. Once you have a starter, you never have to make one again. I keep mine in the fridge, and I feed it roughly once a week.
