Bringing It To You Old-School

Next to French regional shaping, the most fun I had in breads class was making bread from scratch. And I mean really from scratch. Most of the breads we did used commercial yeast, but we also did a couple sourdoughs, using starter that we fed on a daily basis.

In addition to the sourdoughs we made that were served on campus, we had our own sour-from-scratch project. Mandilicious and I used a 75% bread flour, 25% durum blend and started with nothing but flour and water, feeding it over more than a week before using that as our sour.

The idea is that by providing food (flour), water and a comfortable environment, the wild yeast in the air will settle in and start to multiply. It worked. By last Thursday we had a decent amount of gooey, foamy starter that smelled of paint (the alcohol released as a byproduct of fermentation) and pasta (the lactic acids in the durum, the flour traditionally used for making noodles).

We shaped it and allowed it to retard overnight before baking it off on Friday, the last day of class.

Here’s one of the loaves that resulted:

No, it’s not burned... color is flavor, after all. Look at that rise! Look at that ear! (The ridge that results from scoring)

Here’s a shot of the crumb (the interior), which I thought was decent. Not as open as a ciabatta or focaccia, but not as tight as commercially made bread:

Thanks to the inherent sweetness of the durum, the taste was complex and damn delicious, but the best part to me was being able to say I made bread the old-school way, using only wild yeast captured from my environment and carefully nurtured over time. In an era where we use technology as a crutch and expect instant gratification, I think that’s pretty damn cool.