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Joe Baker’s sourdough bread. Photo courtesy of Blair Baker.
The rise of sourdough, so to speak, was a purely natural thing. Before yeasts could be dried and packaged to be shipped all over the world, it was the naturally occurring ones that created the original leavened bread. By creating a starter and nurturing it, humans discovered a way to cultivate these yeasts for the specific purpose of making leavened bread, reliably and consistently.
With the advent of more industrialized breads, however, the process of making sourdough – admittedly a long one – is left to those willing to invest the time and effort for a better loaf of bread. We consulted with one of those people – Joe Baker, Chef Instructor at Le Cordon Bleu – about how to turn this sourdough starter into sourdough bread. Joe goes into detail about the versatility and uses for sourdough starter, and about the many different ways it can be transformed into different results.
Thanks for talking sourdough again with us, Joe. When we last talked, we went over how to begin and maintain a sourdough starter. So we’ve followed the instructions – where are we now?
At this point, it’s definitely stable; you don’t have to watch it nearly as closely. It’s starting to get that really rich, nutty color to it; it doesn’t need as much food as it did in the beginning, but it does still need food. You can continue to feed it flour and water, or what my favorite thing to do is take a piece of whatever bread I’m making, and throw it right back in. It feeds it for a day or so, because it has to break down the actual bread – it’s kind of like time-release food, and it’s convenient for me because I makes dozens of breads. Someone at home might not have that opportunity, in which case flour and water continue to work just fine.
So we’re ready to make bread with this stuff, right? Is there a special way to prep it before beginning the actual dough?
It depends on the bread you want to make in the end. Our starter right now is mature and strong . From there, a thin starter will typically incorporate better, but it will kind of steam out, so you won’t get as much of that sourness. A thick starter will take longer to incorporate, so it’s good for strong, hearty breads like baguette and really tough breads – and it’s really sour because it stays in there longer. So, if I want the starter thicker, I’ll just feed it flour; if I want it thinner, I’ll water it down a little with water when I feed it with the flour. The most important thing is that it needs to be fed at least eight hours in advance of making the dough; don’t feed it just before you want to make bread – when you mix it with the dough you’ll be feeding it again, essentially. You want to make sure it’s balanced before you feed it even more.
And what can we expect from the bread we make with it?
For me, when we talk about the flavor of sourdough, it’s got this sharp acidity, it kind of lingers a little bit in your mouth; it shouldn’t be so strong that it overwhelms everything else, but it should complement – enhance – everything else. That’s what makes it such a good platform for sandwiches, spreads, and things like that. It’s clearly more than flour and water, which is what we started with.
Then when it comes to the crumb, if we’re making a super-traditional miche, which is the French countryside sourdough, the crumb is incredibly irregular, and the pockets are big and all over the place. It’s not as irregular as ciabatta, but it’s close; so much so that you can’t spread butter on it, you can’t spread jam on it – they’ll just fall through those pockets. So usually what we do is make it something like a sourdough boule or batard; the way you handle it makes for a more even crumb structure.
But also, it depends on how you make the dough itself. When you make sourdough, you can add yeast and it will go faster and make the crumb really even. But if we don’t go faster and just use the yeast already inherent in the starter, which is the most authentic version, it will take so long to expand that you’ll develop those big pockets of air. The flavor in that circumstance is considered to be less adulterated, but it’s not so significant to me that I choose one over the other. For me, it’s just about what kind of bread I want to make that day.
What’s your favorite application of sourdough?
I absolutely love miche, and I love baguette. They’re both traditional, but they’re at the opposite ends of the spectrum when we talk about crumb structure. When you see them, it’s what you picture when someone says the words ‘artisan bread’. There’s the baguette, with it’s pointy, gnarly ends and the huge amiche – the amiche is supposed to be big. Like, comically big – pounds and pounds. Usually a miche is three pounds of dough; it’s an event – you take it and you share it with 30 people.
What’s been the most unusual use you’ve found for it?
I’ve used it to make meringue before to complement a chocolate and orange dish, and it was more to see if it could be done, so I tried it. It worked, but I wouldn’t recommend it – it wasn’t amazing or mind-blowing, more just, ‘Oh, okay. That worked.’
But within the normal realm of things, I think pancakes are usually a little out there for most people, and then by extension, we can make waffles with it, which I think is a really nice application.
What will you be guiding us through this time?
Sourdough baguette is usually a pretty good place to start … Click here for Joe’s recipe!