It's All In the Timing
I'm not very patient. In some ways I've been culturally trained that I don't have to wait. I have distinct memories of sending an email to a friend when I was 9 or 10 and receiving a message back in less than an hour! I got on the Amazon train when it was only selling books, I've received catalogues but only ever shopped online or in stores. Now, mostly online. I dread making phone calls and wish I could make all my appointments online, or better yet, have someone else do it for me entirely. I know this boggles some people, and is a bit of a digression, but I am and have grown up with the general concept of near-immediate satisfaction. This is nothing new if you follow generational trends and shifts in society. One thing in my life that bucks this completely is sourdough.
Sourdough takes time. Usually, a lot of time. You cannot rush it. You can nudge it a little bit closer to a benchmark but in that case we're talking single digit minutes. If you really push sourdough through the process faster, you'll taste the difference. And not in a good way. Note: this turned out to be lonnnnng and boring? Maybe? So I WILL NOT JUDGE if you skip to the bottom for the fun internet linky bits.
Sourdough starts several days before you're ready to bake. You have to feed the starter. Depending on your starter it could be once, twice or it might require being fed twice a day for a few days before it's robust enough to be hyper fed, which creates leaven.
Leaven is about a tablespoon of ripe starter mixed with a large amount of flour and water. My usual recipe calls for 200 grams of flour and of water, so 400 grams total with just a little bit of starter. This needs to stand overnight (or 8-10 hours later, your choice) and then the next day you make your dough.
After combining the ingredients to make the dough thoroughly the next step is PAUSE. Crazy, right? This step is called autolyse. Autolyse is really the process of mixing and then resting for 20-60 minutes. This time allows all the ingredients to hydrate and meld into one cohesive mass. Yes, you can skip this step, but your dough will tough to stretch and fold. Autolyse helps this now homogeneous dough to relax and be ready for the gluten to be pulled.
Stretching and folding is different way to thinking of kneading. Kneading, traditional kneading, is often too aggressive for sourdough. Stretching and folding is just that - stretching up one side of the dough and folding it down or in to the middle. You repeat this on each of the four sides and then let rest for 20 minutes. This is a gentle way to develop gluten in the dough. Especially if your working with a higher hydration sourdough, where it can be quite floppy to work with. This is down four times, then you done for the next four hours.
Bulk fermentation, or first rise is the long, extended period of hands off time where the leaven ferment and grow. This is the big break after all your hands on work. Go run errands or watch tv to celebrate!
After this you'll divide the dough, bench rest for 20 minutes. Much like the autolyse a bench rest can be skipped. It serves a similar purpose of letting gluten to relax and makes the dough easier to handle during the final shaping. The bench rest gives you enough time to pull out you banneton baskets, line them with tea towels and flour liberally for the final rise.
Shaping the dough is usually quick. I find the more I fiddle with shaping the dough into a ball or oblong, bâtard style it will fall out of shape if I over work it. Be quick and then place it seam side up in the basket for the final rise.
As I'm typing and thinking about this process I'm internally shouting I'VE NOT EVEN GOTTEN TO BAKING YET. OMG THIS IS SO MUCH TIME. WHYYYYYY. But really you're near the end at the point. (Sorta.) This a marathon, not a sprint. Or for me, it's a mile not a block. For the final rise I often put the baskets in the fridge and bake first thing in the morning. Doing a retarded rise helps prevent the baking process from feeling as long as it is. A slow rise in the fridge also helps create slightly more sour flavor which I prefer. If you're not retarding your dough in the fridge overnight, the final rise takes about 4 hours.
Pulling the loaves out of the fridge when I first wake up is key. You don't want to bake the loaves cold as it could stunt or shock the dough and not baking well. So, pull them out of their cold chamber, let them come up to room temp (or mostly, as much as you can, because you also have to get to work sometime that day) and then preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Go on to make your coffee, wake up a little, pull out your dutch oven and prep your parchment paper, find a safety blade, which is shockingly not safe. After about 20-30 mins flip your first dough blob out of the basket on to the parchment paper. Using the safety blade or sharp knife score the loaf. I tend to do a single slice down the middle at a slight angle. Holding the edges of the parchment paper place it in the dutch oven.
You'll be baking the bread for 40ish minutes. The first 20 with the lid on and the the next 20 (or any where from 20 to 25 depending on how caramelized you want the crust to be) with the lid off. After pulling the dutch oven out use a wooden tool to pop the bread out and place on a cooling rack. Repeat with the other loaves. Be careful placing the uncooked loaves in a HOT pot. I've got the forearm scars to remind myself not to rush.
I promise that, just like anything else in life, once you do this a handful of times and you know the flow, it's not that long. But it is long, it is a process, it is a commitment that once you pass a certain point you must continue or dump it. There's no pausing or taking a break with sourdough. Sourdough takes a lot of time. And like most things that take a while, it's worth it.
Also, I baked bread last weekend and didn't take any picture of it. WILD.
The BreadList - a collection of things I've been reading, making and watching to recently.
One of my favorite places in the world is Zion National Park. This article takes a look at how Utah wanted to up it's tourist game and how you can never undo the momentum.
The oldest company in nearly every country. Colonialism is real y'all.
I've watched the series Counterpart and LOVED IT. This two season series filled my gritty, sci-fi, spy show loving heart.
Who really owns a John Deere? I think about this often. A several years ago I heard about how there were disputes with John Deere and farmers over the computer run equipment and the lack of ability for the farmers to repair broken tractors on their own. Farmers by nature have to be a jack of all trades. You can't call a repairman everytime something small breaks, especially in the middle of a harvest. This conflict expands beyond the software ownership and into who can afford to farm at all any more?
