I made my first loaf of sourdough last week. It took less time to give birth to our first child than it took to make one loaf of bread. Why did I make sourdough? Because I’m weak.
I succumbed to peer pressure. We have granddaughters making sourdough. They nudged and prodded and threw flour in the air until I agreed to give it a try.
Lori Borgman The first thing you do to make sourdough is spend hours and hours on the internet reading about why one method is superior to another. Eventually, your eyes cross and your head bobs one last time and crashes onto your computer keyboard. Step two is making starter.
This is a slurry of flour and water you mix in a bowl, (preferably in a rustic crock bowl suitable for photographs) covered with a tea towel (also suitable for photographs). You leave this on the counter for five or six days. When have you ever left food sitting at room temperature on the kitchen counter for days on end and thought it was safe to eat? Nevertheless, each day you check the mixture, talk nice to it, remove a portion of it and replace it with a fresh measure of flour and water.
This is called “feeding the starter.” Put “feed the starter” on your to-do list or you will forget about it and be caught in an endless cycle of restarting the starter. On perhaps the fifth or sixth day of feeding the starter, you give it a stir and bubbles appear.
This is fermentation. Congratulations! You are now ready to make bread. For beginners, the most common question is,.
