Front Country Sourdough

Last fall, No Depression asked me to write something about food and wellness, so I wrote a piece about my personal journey with sourdough and my own recipe and method. You can read that piece here: COME ON IN MY KITCHEN: Front Country’s Melody Walker on Body Image, Bread, and Self-Love. Or read on to check out the updated formula and baking schedule I’ve been honing in on for the past two years…

Front Country Sourdough

This recipe was originally based on Joshua Weissman’s no knead beginner sourdough bread. I have tweaked several things based on my experience and preferences, but want to give him credit for getting me started on this method. It is solid and easy. If you need a visual walkthrough, his videos and also Foodgeek’s are my favorites.

First, you will need a sourdough STARTER, which you can acquire from a friend, or make on your own in about a week from simple rye flour and water. This video will show you how. 

Other essential equipment:

a large DUTCH OVEN (cast iron or enameled) or large casserole and lid that are both safe up to 500 degrees. (This will create a steam-trapping mini-oven within your home oven, giving you pro bakery level crust and lift.) I use a Lodge XL enameled Dutch oven - it was around $60 as a factory second - or for $40 you can get the Lodge combo cooker, which people love for sourdough baking.

a KITCHEN SCALE, yes, sorry, you will need this for accurate breadmaking (theoretically, you could ask Google what the volume conversions are for each of these weights in grams, but it will be bonkers amounts that are difficult to measure.)

THE START (sometime before noon the day before you need bread)

This basic, no-fail sourdough method begins with two flour and water mixtures called the LEVAIN and the AUTOLYSE that are eventually combined together into the final dough. You start both in the morning (anytime before noon) and leave them in a warm place to work their individual magic for 3-4 hours (I use my oven with the inside light on). After this, you will mix the two together along with the salt to create your dough and begin the bulk rise. Let’s go!

The LEVAIN is basically a frothy and well-fed branch of your starter that will be the leavening yeast for your bread. It’s like a supercharged copy of your starter that has just the right proportions of lift (yeast) and tang (lactobacilii) for this specific recipe. The AUTOLYSE process lets warm water go to work dissolving the starches in your flour over several hours (before the addition of the yeast or salt), which benefits the texture and crust of the final loaf. You could see it as premixing most of the flour and water in the whole recipe early on so they become good friends.

Working by weight with a kitchen scale is crucial to breadmaking, as measures are determined as a specific percentage of total flour weight. Don’t be scared. I already did the math part for you!

 

LEVAIN

Mix ingredients together in a quart Mason jar, starting by dissolving the starter in the water, then adding the flour. Cover loosely with a lid or plastic wrap and mark the level on the side of the jar. It is ready to use when at least doubled in volume, but possibly tripled, so make sure your jar has plenty of headroom.

45g sourdough starter (4-8 hrs after last feeding)
45g all purpose unbleached flour
45g whole wheat flour
90g filtered room temp water 

AUTOLYSE

Immediately after making your levain, mix the following thoroughly together in a large bowl and then cover with plastic or a lid to prevent drying out. Place in oven with light on (about 80F) beside your jar of levain.

500g all purpose unbleached flour
275g bread flour (higher gluten content)
175g whole wheat flour
20g fine sea salt or himalayan pink salt
700g filtered very warm water (90F)

THE MIX

After 3-4 hours (or whenever the levain has at least doubled in volume), remove from warm spot and incorporate the levain into the autolyse. Wet your hands and mix by hand for at least 10 minutes. This will be sticky, so I like to just use one hand. When sufficiently mixed, dough will be uniform, but shaggy looking, with no dry spots and no unincorporated flour remaining in bowl. It is nearly impossible to overmix dough by hand, so it’s better to work this on the longer side to make sure gluten develops. Cover tightly and place back in your warm spot. Mixing with wet hands in the bowl instead of kneading with flour on a bench is why this is considered a “no knead” method. In the next step, time, temperature, and a series of gentle folds and stretches will further develop the dough and enhance its structure with no elbow grease necessary.

 

THE RISE

Now that the dough is together, the next 4-5 hours will be the “bulk fermentation” period — the main rise or proof — which, unlike traditional breadmaking methods, is interrupted at regular intervals to lightly shape and condition the dough. I like to do 4-6 “stretch and folds” spaced by 10 minutes each, to develop gluten strength. After your fourth “stretch and fold” you want to do the “windowpane test” to make sure your gluten is developed enough to move onto the rest of the bulk fermentation. If not, do one or two more sets of folds and it should be good to go.

Next, split the dough in half with a bench scraper and put into two separate glass or plastic containers.  The remainder of the rise will be interrupted by 2-4 “coil folds” to develop tension and shape in the individual dough balls. Always with lightly wet hands to avoid sticking. You can see more examples of both the “stretch and fold” and “coil fold”  in my Instagram story highlights. Shoutout to Trevor Jay Wilson for codifying these techniques in his inspiring Instagram account and wonderful e-book Open Crumb Mastery.

Once your dough balls (puddles) are about 1.5 bigger in size, are domed, and spring back slowly from a gentle poke with your wet or floured finger, it’s time for the pre-shape, bench rest, and final shaping. I highly recommend watching YouTube videos on dough shaping, as it is easier learned visually. Here is one of my favorites.  

Usually it is later in the evening at this point. The shaped boules will go into lightly floured (rice flour is best) bannetons or bowls lined with linen cloth, and into plastic bags in the fridge overnight. The cooler temperature will slow down the fermentation and allow flavor to develop on a long, cold, slow final rise. Leave for at least 12 hours, but up to 36 for even more sour flavor.

THE BAKE

In the morning, place a cast iron or enameled Dutch oven in the oven with the lid on (make sure your lid handle is not made of plastic) and preheat at 500F for a full hour.

When ready, cut a circle of parchment paper a couple inches larger than your boule. Place parchment on top of basket or bowl and invert gently. Quickly slash (“score”) the top of the boule about a half inch deep with a razor blade in whatever pattern you prefer and carefully lower it (using the sides of the parchment as handles) into the screaming hot pot. Slam the lid back on and close the oven (do not forget to wear oven mitts for this). Here’s a great video on scoring patterns.

After 20 minutes, remove the lid, reduce the temperature to 450F, and (optionally) place a sheet pan on the rack below the pot to shield the bottom (my oven runs hot on the bottom). Let bake 20 more minutes, until dark ochre in color. Let cool completely on a rack or cardboard box.

Increase temp back up to 500F and bake the second loaf after 20 minutes of reheating of pot and lid, or wait till the next morning to see how the flavor changes with longer cold fermentation.

Wait at least one hour before cutting into bread to allow the crumb to set. Two hours is even better.

Baking recap:

Preheat oven and pot to 500F for a full hour
20 min with lid on at 500F
20 min with lid off at 450F (shield bottom with another pan if needed)
(preheat pot for 20 min between bakes)

Once you get a feel for this basic recipe and method, you can tweak the flour ratios, hydration percentage (this dough is ~77% hydration), times, temperatures, and shaping to get different results. But be aware that the smallest details can have a big effect on the result, so keep the changes small at first.

For more info as well as links to my favorite videos, blogs, tips, and bread pics, check out the rest of the blog or follow me on Instagram, where I’m happy to answer any questions or help you troubleshoot. Feel free to use the hashtag #frontcountrysourdough so I can see the bread you make.

Bake on!

Adventures in Sourdough

Since Front Country was gifted a starter in Alaska this past summer (2018) I have been re-exploring the wild and wonderful world of bread making - specifically, naturally leavened, country sourdough bread. The last time I had attempted the art of sourdough was over ten years ago, and the information was abundant but low quality. Most recipes called for a baking stone and/or various ineffective methods of creating steam in a home oven - including spray bottles, pans of water and ice cubes thrown onto the oven floor. Starter was also a thing of myth and pseudo-science, and some believed you couldn’t even make sourdough bread anywhere but San Francisco, with it’s magical wild yeasts that ride in on the sea breeze. Yeah, that’s all bullsh*t (turns out, it’s in the flour).

When Mark Bittman of the New York Times popularized the first “no knead” bread recipe baked in a dutch oven, it was a revelation. I watched the video, made the simple yeasted bread, and felt all at once victorious at the result and betrayed by decades of bread baking books. Why didn’t anyone figure this out sooner? The crust was perfect - dark and chewy yet crusty. The loaf was tall and full of bubbly holes like a real rustic loaf should be. The results were instantly head and shoulders above any homemade bread I had ever made or had, and I was so pissed about it I stopped baking bread for a decade.

Fast forward to 2018 and when our band was gifted some supposed 100 year old liquid Alaskan sourdough starter, I vowed to once again attempt the art of naturally leavened sourdough bread. Luckily the resources are plentiful now - some 15 years after Bittman’s no knead bread and Tartine setting the bar for rustic perfection. YouTube and the blogosphere abound with accessible and accurate guides to artisan bread baking. Here are a few of my favorite resources.

#1: Joshua Weissman’s No Knead Beginner Sourdough Bread

I used this YouTube tutorial for my first bake and got great results the first time, and even better on try #2. If you watch this a few times and take some notes, then follow his instructions exactly, you should be good to go. The only thing he glosses over is gluten development, and that is the only reason my second try was even better. To make your first try the best it can be, make sure you work the dough a little longer than he says to before going into bulk fermentation and folding. Everything else in this video is right on the money.

#2: The Perfect Loaf blog

This blog is a comprehensive resource on beginning to intermediate sourdough bread making. Dig it.

#3: Trevor Jay Wilson’s Instagram

Along with his hashtag and ebook #OpenCrumbMastery, I have learned so much about the craft and science of sourdough from this dude. He is codifying and evolving a modern technique that yields Tartine-like textures at home. Buy his eBook here, or follow him on Instagram to watch his constant experimentation in real time.

#4: NYT Cooking Video - “Speedy No Knead Bread”

From the earliest days of foodie YouTube, way back in olde 20 and 06. This isn’t the best method at all, but it’s the simplest show-and-tell of the dutch oven technique, demonstrated to Mark Bittman by Jim Lahey, and it was my first exposure to the idea.

Things I have added to my personal method so far:

• Bannetons: inexpensive rattan baskets for the second proof of bread after shaping (that’s where some of these loaves get that beautiful spiral - I only have one, so the other loaves you see have been proofed in a bowl with a cloth. I’m planning on grabbing a few batard shaped ones next.

• Parchment: Don’t mess around with a bakers peel and trying to slide wet dough into your dutch oven. Cut a circular piece of parchment an inch or so wider than your loaf, place it on top of your proofing bowl or basket and then invert. Quickly score and then use the sides of the parchment as handles to gently lower the loaf into the scorching hellfire.

• Rice Flour: crucial for dusting the bowl or banneton. It won’t meld into your loaf while it sits, and creates a non-stick coating that doesn’t get cakey. What you see in my photos is all rice flour dusting.

• Pre-heating: the one-hour preheat at 500F is a must, to get the dutch oven screaming hot and get the oven spring I want, but once I take the lid off 20 minutes in, I turn down to 450F for the last 20 min. You want a dark ochre color all over, otherwise your middle might be underdone.

• Shield your bottom: I was having some great bakes with these high temps, but my bottoms were coming out a bit too dark and bitter. The solution? Halfway through the bake (when you take the lid off and turn the temp down) throw a sheet pan on the rack just below the dutch oven to deflect some of the heat.

• No Cooling Rack? It’s cool. Just use a cardboard box turned upside down. That’s what I do for cookies too.

• Coil Folds: Trevor Jay Wilson (@trevorjaywilson) has a very specific folding technique that develops dough strength and keeps large bubbles while elongating them. Check out his instagram for examples. Lately, I have been starting with two “stretch and folds” (like in Joshua Weissman’s video) and then switching to 4 more “coil folds” during bulk. It is magic.

• Rye Starter: I keep an all rye starter at a 1:2:2 ratio of starter to rye flour to water. Rye is pretty “hot” food for starter, so mine triples fairly quickly (in about 3 hrs). I find it adds a complexity of flavor to my loaves, and my starter culture seems to love it, so yay!

• Young Starter, Young Levain: Because I have a life, I don’t always succeed at timing this just right, but I’ve found that it is noticeably ideal to make the levain out of starter that is at it’s peak (for me, about 3 hrs after feeding), and then use the levain when it just peaks (3-4hrs). This is when I get my best shaping and oven spring.

• Brown Bag it: Don’t ziplock your loaves - at least not right away or the crust will get leathery. Use a brown paper bag (I just grab extras from the grocery store), and then maybe use a plastic bag after day 2 to keep the cut pieces hydrated. After the second day, you’ll be toasting it back to life anyway.

What are your sourdough trials and errors? If you have tips or questions, I’d love to hear. Hit me up to talk bread!

Here is a gallery of my sourdough loaves so far…