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.
“United States of Bread: Our Nation’s Home Baking Heritage,” by Adrienne Kane, is a general book about bread baking. Kane has gathered recipes from regions around the country based on what local women and bakers put on the table; for example, wheat didn’t grow well in New England. Kane gives us corn bread recipes for this region — plus I want to make the graham puffs on page 142. The instructions for starting a sourdough are spot-on following the techniques of the popular internet bakers but as this book came out in 2014, I think Kane was the influencer! She even mentions using a Dutch oven for baking.
Many baking influencers on social media are using those Le Crueset dutch ovens but you don’t need one to bake good bread. More power to the collectors! They are pretty. You heat it up and create your little oven to keep the bread moist, yet crusty. Finding some sort of a cast-iron Dutch oven is on my bucket list, but I’m not paying hundreds of dollars for one. I might find a fancy one at an estate sale or I might go ahead and buy a true cast-iron piece because I can take it camping. There’s no way I’m going to take a $200 Dutch oven and pop it into a campfire and heap coals on top of it.
Want to learn more about cast iron cookware? We have a few books in the collection about non-enameled cookware and a few cookbooks.
For a great explanation of using cast iron for baking and for creating the perfect crust on your loaf, check out “Wild Bread: Flour + Water + Air.” On page 216, author MaryJane Butters goes into detail about using ice in a second enameled cast iron pan to create helpful steam, a process recommended in the advanced baking section of the book. Another unique aspect of this book are the adjustments for different flours, three from heirloom grains and two non-gluten. The directions are easy to follow and I feel as if Butters is standing at my elbow, friendly and welcoming. I feel this to be one of the best we have available that I have reviewed. Is it though? We have 174 books on baking! I’ve not reviewed all of them.
This next book isn’t about bread but about sourdough cakes and other deserts. Dee Rettali is a professional baker who believes in “preserving traditional crafts, using time-honored techniques and sourcing simple seasonal ingredients.” The batters in “Baking with Fortitude: Sourdough Cakes and Bakes,” are fermented or use fermented ingredients. She has a buttermilk starter for her sourdough loaf cakes. I loved Rettali’s delightful way of titling each recipe; it’s “Guinness and Chocolate Fermented Loaf,” as if emphasizing that a Guinness loaf and a chocolate loaf are each wonderful but as you combine these two flavors you are taken to a divine place of decadent taste. Especially if you ice it with buttercream. I’ve included it not only because of the fermentation, but to draw to your attention the recipes, some unique to Ireland and England.
Two other aspects of fermenting for baking is desem (pronounced DAY-zum and is of Flemish orientation) and rye bread. Learn more from Tara Jensen’s book “Flour Power: The Practice and Pursuit of Baking Sourdough Bread.” Jensen provides you with clear directions as well as the history of sourdough, desem and rye baking techniques. This is also the only book in this review that reminds us that beer-making and bread-making are sister crafts. Back when fermenting your fouled water into slightly alcoholic but much safer-to-drink ale was necessary, the left-over grain was available to bakers. Already lively with yeast and lactic acid bacteria, the left-over grain took the place of a sourdough starter on the baker’s counter. “Flour Power” would make an excellent starter book for a sourdough baker. Lots of science and learning provided with the tasty variations of bread. All of this article’s authors are professional bakers and many have learned their crafts in a variety of bakeries. Jensen’s experience was clustered along the east coast.
My experience is in Columbia, but I have been interested for most of my adult life. None of the recipe books of my early adulthood contained sourdough recipes, which always confused me that it was spoken of as a historic process. When I visited a medieval living history camp that had both beer and bread production areas and learned of the interconnection between the two crafts, it all clicked! While early Americans might have used sourdough, modern conveniences such as dried yeast cubes began in the 1800’s. Now, of course, we have many books, magazines and YouTube channels dedicated to reintroducing this generation to a historical craft.
I’m having fun. And baking a couple of loaves a week. Once I’ve mastered sourdough bread? Bring on the butter and jam!
