Basic Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread Part Two: In Which We Bread

     Have starter, will travel...

     My intent here is to present a recipe, but more importantly a method, that's as simple and streamlined as possible which will allow you to produce a professional quality bread out of a home kitchen every time with no unnecessary steps or exertions.  Once you've got the logic down, you can then use it as a basis for more involved types of bread to which you'd like to apply a sourdough starter.  In future posts, I'll show you how you can utilize this same technique to make sourdough bagels, flat bread, pita, focaccia, a thick-crusted loaf, and even a whole wheat sourdough pizza crust that's actually good.

     What's needed is time.  Sourdough ferments at a much slower rate than baker's yeast.  Whereas a packet of active dry yeast can double a dough mass in two hours or less, a sourdough culture will take most of the night.  If you want to bake bread for lunch, you have to start the dough the night before, preferably the day before.  There are no shortcuts when it comes to the wait.  Great bread requires great patience.   The good news is the actual work is minimal.  You don't need a mixer and you don't have to knead for 20 minutes.  The trick is to let the microbes do most of the work while you gently guide the process in the right direction.  One of the many advantages sourdough has, though, is fermentation temperature.  You'll notice that at no point will I say you need to place the dough in a warm spot in order for it to rise.  Your natural culture performs very well at common room temperatures.  Anywhere between 65 and 85 degrees will do perfectly, so you'll have no problem baking bread in a winter kitchen.

     Let's take a look at our ingredients:

•   Three cups whole wheat flour 
•  1 1/2 cups room temperature water 
•  Sourdough starter (about two tablespoons) 
•  Three teaspoons kosher salt dissolved in the water*

These specific numbers are immaterial.  It's just the amount I'll usually make for a couple days worth of bread. What's important are the ratios:

• One part water to two parts flour 
• About a teaspoon of kosher salt per cup of flour*

*The amount of salt of course is to taste, but you absolutely need at least a minimum of salt for the bread to come out properly.  Keep in mind that table salt will have more salinity per volume than kosher salt due to the shape of the grains, so adjust accordingly.

     Now pour the water into the flour.   Use a spoon or spatula to mix the center into a batter-like consistency.

 It's at this point you add in the starter.

Keep mixing until the flour and water have completely come together.  You may find that the dough mass will be dryer or wetter according to ambient humidity.  With this ratio, it really should never be too dry, but if you find it too wet just add a little bit more flour in -- you will want the dough to be on the moist side, though, as it makes a big difference in how the bread expands in the oven.  You shouldn't have to knead with your hands, but rather bring it together with your utensil until it's a singular, homogeneous mass with good elasticity.

Cover it up and say goodnight...



     Good morning!

If it's been a solid eight hours, the dough will have risen visibly to twice its original size.  I would say that's the minimum time for fermentation.   Letting it be for a few more hours will give you more flavor.  If your bowl is clear, you'll see the air bubbles when you lift it up and peek underneath.

You can now uncover and punch it down, though I prefer to simply fold it over a few times rather than use violence.  (If I weren't streamlining this so much, at this point I would knead on a surface, adding whole wheat flour as necessary, then let rise again for another eight hours or so.  What that does is maintain gluten strength while giving the culture more time to develop a strong sourdough flavor.)  Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured board (you'll be using white flour as bench flour), stretch it out, and fold it over on itself a few times until it stiffens up.

The dough will be stretchy and airy and give off a lovely aroma as you fold it.

You can now portion it out into the number of rolls you want.

Fashion them into any shape of you choose, and lay them evenly spaced with room to rise in a flat-bottomed dish that you can cover with plastic or a towel.

 Let rise for about two hours.

      Preheat your oven as high as it will go.

If you're lucky, it will get upwards of 550 degrees which is good for this size roll (a larger loaf might require a lower temperature for longer baking).  The extreme heat makes for rapid steam expansion which will create a lighter, fluffier interior as well as help to bring flavor and aroma to the crust.  Now let's look at our baking surface and a couple tricks which help to turn your home oven into a makeshift baker's oven.

I do practically all my baking on a cast iron griddle.  Christine gave it to me for my birthday and I absolutely love it.  I find cast iron transfers heat perfectly to the bread as well as help to maintain consistent temperature in the oven.  Before the griddle, I used a turned-over cast iron frying pan which worked just as well.  You can also use a common pizza stone or even some bricks if you want to be ponk rok about it.  You'll notice in the photo that we have a pizza stone on the rack under the griddle.  That's always there to help regulate temperature.  Once your oven heats up, you want it to stay at temp. as consistently as possible instead of fluctuating as the oven cycles.  The most important trick here is that sauce pan off to the side.  It has boiling water in it to let steam rise as the bread bakes.  A moist oven environment is crucial for a well-developed crust.  It makes a huge difference.  A thick, chewy, bakery-style crust is only possible in a humid oven.   Bring about an inch of water to a boil on the range and then place the pan in the oven when it has sufficiently heated.  It needs to be boiling when you slide the bread in.

     After a good two hours, the dough has sufficiently relaxed and risen to be ready for baking.  Place as many rolls as will fit on your baking surface onto your floured board.  You want to make sure their bottoms have enough fresh bench flour so that they slide on and off the peel.  You can also slice vents in any pattern you wish.  These help with regular expansion, but they're mainly decorative.

At this stage, it's important to handle the dough delicately.  You don't want to collapse the air pockets that have taken so long to develop or stiffen the relaxed gluten so that it won't stretch out in the oven.  Plenty of bench flour will make sure that nothing sticks, to you or to your work surfaces.  I'll include a photo of rolls made from a moister dough here.

You'll notice they seem flatter and they're not as easy to handle after they've relaxed.  The benefit of a wetter dough is greater expansion and bigger steam pockets making for a fluffier interior.  A dryer dough makes for a denser texture with more regular aeration.  It's all a matter of preference, though I've noticed that wetter doughs will tend to yield a lighter, sweeter flavor.  I've never gotten a true sour flavor out of one.

     If you have a peel, now's the time to use it.

I picked up this mini one a while back and it works great for small-scale baking.  If you don't have one, you can use a large spatula or even a cutting board, but a peel makes life much easier.  Whatever your method, slide the rolls directly onto the baking surface and close the door.

Note the time and expect to wait at least ten minutes before you can take them out again.  I usually find twelve to fifteen minutes to be the norm.  After a few minutes, you'll notice the edges of the rolls start to lift off the surface.  This generally means you've done everything right and you're going to enjoy good bread.  Pat yourself on the back now.

The rolls will continue to expand until they look as if they're going to burst.  After ten minutes or so, you'll notice the crust start to develop a toasty color.

You'll want to wait until it gets as dark as possible without looking burned.  You can use your peel or spatula to lift up a roll to see if the bottom looks done.  It should have a dark, toasty sear mark -- not burned, but dark.  If you feel you can't leave it in any longer without burning, it's time to take it out.

You'll have to let them rest well-ventilated on a board for at least ten minutes in order for the proteins to set properly.  Only then should you cut into them.

Here's what a wetter dough's interior will look like after baking:

      We enjoyed this batch with some smoked salmon, red onion, broccoli sprouts, and a sprouted chick pea hummus that Christine whipped up.  However, my favorite way to eat good bread right out of the oven is dipping it in extra virgin olive oil.

Well, that's it!  I hope I didn't over complicate it.  It really is super simple.