i'm so lamé; a sourdough tutorial of sorts

So, in an attempt to share what my techniques are, in a sourdough tutorial of sorts, I blew it. I thought about taking pictures AFTER mixing up the dough, so this opening pic is really a re-creation of the ingredients involved. I'm so lame. I'll try and make it up to you with a story, I promise. Anyway, from bottom left to top right it goes: "fed" starter*, water, bread flour, whole wheat flour, salt keep, and partially risen, made ahead of time like on TV dough.

Okay, see, what you're aiming to do here is combine a cup of active starter (nice and bubbly), a cup and a half of warm water, 4 cups of white bread flour, 1 cup of whole wheat flour, and mix while you can. Then knead together for a few minutes on a bread board. Or in a mixer if you like, but I prefer my hands. Keeps 'em strong and makes me feel connected more with my food. After making dough just a few times, you will begin to feel more of the texture and gluten development as you knead and the time involved will become less. Oh yeah, after kneading cover with a clean cloth while you go do something else. Sourdough hates to be watched. Don't know why, just does. (Perhaps because of modesty; it's alive and ALOT of procreation is happening during the first rise, hmmmmm.)

Come back about half an hour later, mash into a flat disk with your hands and sprinkle half of your salt on it. Knead for another minute, then add the rest of the salt. Knead for five more minutes and then put into a lightly oiled large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Put in a warm** place for a few hours and punch down when doubled in volume, cover, and leave alone, so continued doughy hanky panky occurs. Come back when doubled in size again.

Punch dough down again, remove from bowl, place on floured board and cut in half. Take one half and using a rolling pin, or your hands if you're up to the challenge (most days not), form dough into a rough rectangle shape roughly 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.

Take long edge of dough and roll, forming a plain, jellyroll looking thingy, dust with more flour, and place on parchment paper. (I can totally relate to the anal-retentive chef sometimes, so I like to trim the paper to a shape about an inch or two larger than the loaf, with an extra few inches on one side for pulling off of its rising place before putting in the hot oven.) If you have a pizza peel, or something like it, you would probably let your bread do its final rise on it and then tranfer to the oven, but I don't have one and having a large paddle in the house is not a good idea with a toddler around. Besides, using parchment works fine. The extra tab of paper at the end will make a nice pull handle for smoothly transfering your loaf onto a pizza stone.

Oh yeah, equipment. I have baked free-form loaves on cookie sheets and the results are alright. Putting loaves in baguette pans is nice, but I get the most satisfaction from shaping by hand and transfering to a pizza stone. The stone puts a huge amount of heat into the bread while retaining it's own, so in essence it cooks things as evenly as possible. If this doesn't make sense, look it up sometime. The extreme hot temperatures of the stone will make one poofy loaf as all the gas in the dough rapidly expands. Since you don't want to blow up your bread, it's nice to cut it, or give it a few slashes with a bread scoring device called a lamé in order to help it escape. If you don't know what that is, just go down to a nice kitchen supply store, like Sur La Table, with your little one and ask the kind person who strikes you as having the highest likelihood of speaking the most french. Put the accent on the last vowel and announce confidently "Yes, I'm here for a lamé, have you ever heard of one of those?"

With any luck, they will direct you over to them and show you the varieties in stock. While discussing their attributes and razor sharp edge, if your child is perhaps banging on your legs and demanding your attention and wanting to see what you are holding whilst trying to have an adult conversation, hand your kid one to play with and shock the clerk. (Taped up, rendering it safe, mind you.) As you strain to understand the clerk discussing the proper use of said bread tool behind their thick accent, catch snippets of what your child is saying in a low but clear voice as they run the tool up and down your upper thighs, working toward your crotch "scrape, scrape, scrape." Scrape, you think. Huh?

You look down to confirm the safety of the hopefully still good to play with instrument and try to refocus on the clerk, "yes, so what are the advantages of this model over the other?"

"Scrape. scrape.......oh, mommy uses this in the shower....." you hear emanating from somewhere below your belt.

"Yes, I see the longer handle would come in nice with larger loaves" you say rather loudly, hoping to drown out your child as the clerk politely smiles at you, then glances at your kid as they continue dragging the tool up and down the front of your pants.

"Yes, this green handled one seems like it might work rather nicely" you blurt out abruptly as your monkey is now innocently running what they think is a shaving razor with a protective cover over the top, all over your thighs and partially between your legs, saying "scrape, scrape, scrape, mommy uses this to shave her vulva."

"Thank you very much, you've been most helpful. I believe I'll take this one, yes. Might you direct me to the register?"

I highly recommend getting one of these. Purchase one alone if you don't want to announce to Berkeley's Fourth Street shopping district that it is summer time and therefore possible that the bikini line and inner thigh shaving that accompanies such fine weather was witnessed by your (then ) 2&1/2 year old. The lamé edge slices into a loaf much easier than a kitchen knife and it's curved orientation allows for much shallower approach angles. Bake a couple loaves at the same time and cut them different ways to get a feel for the range of possibilities and your own personal preference. So far, I prefer orienting the curved blade so that it matches the curve of the loaf and I cut as quickly as possible with light finger pressure and much wrist.

With the pizza stone in the oven, and having been preheating at a good 500 degrees for at least an hour (depending on the width and thickness of your pizza stone), slide the freshly sliced loaf onto the stone and begin spraying the sides of your oven with copious quantities of water for a minute. Close the oven door and set your timer for about 7-10 minutes depending on the size of the loaf. After two minutes, open the oven door and spray vigorously into it, wetting the walls, bottom, top, and even pizza stone and bread.

When the timer goes off, pull open the oven and flip the bread around 180 degrees in orientation and put back in for another 7-10 minutes. Resist the temptation to spray it again. When loaf looks nice and brown and done, turn off oven and place loaf onto upper wire rack and let sit with the door open while the oven cools off for about five minutes. If you are going for the ultimate in texture and springiness, let the bread cool completely before cutting into it. If you have a life and/or kids, cut it when you can't stand waiting any longer and immediately spread some coagulated butterfat or oily substitute all over it and stuff it in your face.



After loading up on carbs, run down to the "playground" and make sure you follow the painted lines on the asphalt wherever you go, letting them dictate the route from one end of the basketball court through the four-square and over to the monkey bars. The exercise will help settle your stomach.




While enjoying the spontaneous game of "horsies flying around like airplanes daddy!" think back to the artwork at your house. If there is a small artist in residence, perhaps the geometric hand prints left in the steamy window, prompted by their attempt to make order out of the chaos we call modern life, might come to mind.


While you contemplate your child's growing expression of life and art, think about your own expression of that. Think about the delicious bread being digested into your cells. Think about the love and process that went into it. Think about how whenever you use a lamé, a little voice pops into your mind saying "scrape, scrape, scrape." Then fall onto the ground, laughing your ass off and crying with joy as you realize how much you love your job here on earth.......

Thanks for bearing with me on my first "tutorial," if you can call it that. If you have any more questions and still have the confidence that I may be of some further help, please go ahead and ask.

Notes:

* A fed starter is one approximately the consistency of pancake batter that was mixed with one part flour and one part water the night before and allowed to sit on the counter, covered until use. The remainder of the starter gets put back into a container and placed in the fridge until used again, usually within 5-10 days.

** A warm place could be the inside of your oven with the door closed and light on, somewhere near a warm air vent, or simply your countertop. Covering the dough is ideal, as with longer rising times you will keep most of the airborn cooties from interfering with flavor and it will keep from developing a skin and drying out. I find somewhere near 70 degrees works nice.