Navigation

Since returning from California, I've thawed the starter, and been diligently feeding it on 3-4 day intervals with a nice organic whole-wheat bread flour, that I'm picking up at LifeStyles in the 10 KG bag. Always good to have a large stash of that in the magic-pantry eh? I'd say the starter has great legs at this point.....with quite an active wild yeast.

These loaves got their start on Thursday night, when I mixed the firm starter after dinner. Basically threw together 2/3 cup starter, with 4.5 oz whole-wheat flour, and 1/4 cup of water. Left it in a beaker on the kitchen counter and it doubled in volume in under 2 hours! Left it in the fridge overnight for some cold-fermentation. Went to work on Friday, leaving the firm starter in the fridge. This is the part of the bread-making where it is just making itself.

After dinner on Friday, I de-chilled the starter out of the fridge, then threw it into the final dough with 20.25 oz. of red-fife sifted wheat flour and 1.75 cups lukewarm water. I do the mixing in the KitchenAid, for a total of 12 minutes, followed by (in this case) about 5 minutes of kneading. There is also about 20 minutes of dough-resting in there where I'm just waiting for enough gluten strands to form up and give us some stretchiness to the dough. It has to hold a stretch between the hands, and not tear apart. After the dough was ready to rise, I left it in a beaker on the counter-top about 10 PM. Went to bed around 11:30 and it was still rising.

For a bit there in the summer, I was experimenting with spiking the dough with commercial yeast, just to get the primary fermentation complete before bed-time. That did indeed complete the batch faster, but I didn't like the result as much as just leaving the wild yeast on its own to do its thing. So, I've been leaving the dough out on the kitchen counter over-night, and coming down in the wee hours to shape the loaves.

For these loaves, I shaped them around 3 AM, when I happened to be up anyway. If it's not the kids getting me up, then it's the 2 cups of herb tea I drink before bed time. So, with loaves shaped about 3 AM, I left them out on the counter to rise. This can take about 4 hours, depending on the room temperature. A little longer this morning, as it was a bit more chilly inside. I threw them in the oven around 830 AM (I think) for about 35 mins at 350 F.

So there you have it - fresh, home-made, whole-wheat sourdough. I'll do this routine about 3 times per week, and feed the starter 2 times per week. I'm feeding the starter enough to double its volume every time (usually keeping an average of about 12 oz. to double).