Sourdough bread is a slightly sour type of bread risen by a fermentation process of yeast, water and flour. It is a very versatile process that produces quite a range of breads and cakes. What I bring to you in this article is a mixture of bread cookbooks, and a lot of them contain recipes and instructions about how to get started baking and enjoying your own sourdough.
If you want to read about a baker who fell in love with a 125-year-old starter, read the introduction to “Sourdough Culture: A History of Bread Making From Ancient to Modern Bakers” by Eric Pallent. This is a well-written history following the cultivation of grains, particularly wheat. The Egyptians may have been the first bakers to use sourdough, but archeological evidence doesn’t indicate if there was an established starter or if mixed ground grain and water was allowed to ferment for a time before being kneaded and baked. As of 2021, no Egyptian or earlier bread recipe has been found.
I have always wanted to bake with a generational sourdough but have been too shy to ask my friends if anyone has one to share. So earlier in the year I started my own by mixing 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of un-chlorinated water and 1 teaspoon of commercial dry yeast into a pint jar, and then set it out to pick up wild yeast that might be floating around in my kitchen. Yes, I cheated. Traditionally there is no commercial dry yeast. But I keep feeding it, dividing it and making bread and maybe it has gone wild. It’s certainly doing its own thing over there in the corner of my kitchen.
Continue reading “How Baking Sourdough Changed My Life for the Better”
