Starting My Sourdough Adventure

Ever since the pandemic craze I’ve wanted to bake sourdough loaves. It was always so alluring to create a sourdough starter and tend to this living herd of yeast, using it to make bread instead of store-bought yeast.

Because making and maintaining the starter seemed like a delicate task it’s always been postponed; I first wanted to throw together some hardware to track things like ambient temperature and starter height over time. Because of my cousin’s insistent encouragement however, I decided to go ahead anyways and give it a try (even without any data collection). I ended up baking six loaves, some of them ending up very delicious and others not so much.

As became patently obvious, the sourdough starter is the most important part of the process. Instead of using store-bought yeast, you cultivate your own culture of symbiotic bacteria and wild yeast with regular feedings of flour and water. The bacteria increases acidity, adding the distinctive sourdough taste, while the wild yeast makes the dough rise. I used the feeding schedule from The Perfect Loaf to start my starter, using whole grain flour instead of rye since that’s what I had on hand.

First Loaves

Six days later with a bubbling sourdough starter, I began on my first set of loaves. I used the Beginner’s Sourdough Bread recipe from The Perfect Loaf, a whole-day process involving fermentation, stretching and folding, and shaping - ending with proofing in the fridge overnight.¹ I’m still not sure if I put too much water in my dough since it wasn’t willing to come together when first mixed, but ended up quite nice by the final stretch and fold. The next morning, the loaves were ready to be scored and baked in a dutch oven.

My first set of sourdough loaves coming out of the oven

The loaves ended up rising well - the second loaf even smashed into the top of the dutch oven and ended up a little deformed. They also tasted great, although the “sourdough” tang wasn’t really there according to some of my family members. I didn’t take any photos of the loaves’ interior (we were all too busy eating the bread) but it was much softer than I expected with quite floppy slices. Also I wasn’t sure how to store the bread. After only a bit of time the crust went from perfectly crunchy to being as tough as 13^th-century-peasant-bread.

Second Loaves: Beginners Luck Fades

Riding off the high of my mostly successful first attempt I started neglecting my starter, often delaying and even missing feedings. (Now would be the perfect opportunity for an analysis of starter growth over time compared with my first loaf, but alas). I started another batch on about a week later anyways. Alarm bells were ringing when the levain didn’t rise as much as my first batch and and even more dread set in when I didn’t see bubbles on the surface of the dough. I forged ahead regardless, ending up with the following.

My second set of sourdough loaves, more accurately described as bricks

It would be an understatement to say the loaves didn’t rise well. They ended up so dense that they could cause some serious harm if thrown at someone. I tried to eat some and it was still edible, although not an enjoyable experience. Even though I was disappointed at how they turned out, it was still satisfying to see the dramatic impact my starter had on the final product across the relatively long preparation and baking process, especially with so many other variables at play.

Third Loaves

With renewed vigor I vowed to diligently feed my starter twice a day, using the generated discard to make cinnamon bread and blueberry scones. Four days later, I used the same process to prepare and bake this set, except using ~100g of all purpose flour (I ran out of bread flour).

My third set of sourdough loaves with a new design!

Although still lacking, the sourdough tang was much more pronounced than my first set - which I expect will continue to get stronger the more my starter matures. Counterintuitively, these loaves also had firmer slices than my first set despite using less bread flour.² In the end though I liked these loaves much better than my first ones!

Now my starter happily lives in the fridge for feedings and and use in baking sourdough loaves hopefully about once a week.