October 22nd, 2007

My Sourdough Recipe, or a Lesson in Slowing Down

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I’m a big fan of sourdough bread. I love the slow process in which flour and water become a tasty, crunchy bread. The feeling of a miracle when you see the first bubbles appear to your dough. And the idea that the starter can live for centuries to be shared from father to son and grandson.

There is something special to it that you don’t see too often in our modern fast-paced lives.

No, I’m not making this blog a cook book, but this is a great recipe, and one with a profound meaning. So, let’s start baking.

Making the starter - a lesson in waiting

The process starts by getting some flour (I use rye flour to make a Finnish style rye bread, but you can use wheat as well, depending on your personal preferences) and a drop of water. Two cups of both to be precise, although the amount doesn’t seem to matter that much. One thing I have learned in my experiments is that it’s really hard to go wrong in making sourdough bread. If you just spend some time and love in the process, you will most likely succeed.

Mix the two ingredients and put them in a jar.

And then you wait.

That’s something I rarely do in life: just leave something to rest and wait. My life is hectic just like yours and pretty much everyone’s, filled with tasks and things to do. Pretty soon that pace gets to you and you forget how to just stand still.

That’s why making bread is a great exercise in patience. It makes me wait without doing anything.

In a day or two the starter starts to bubble. Mix it gently, take out a cup of it, add one cup of both of the ingredients. Mix. And then wait again. At this point you can put the dough in the fridge.

After about a week when the starter has a rather strong but delicious smell, you are ready to make your first bread.

Baking the bread - a lesson in concentration

Pour the starter to a bowl, add four cups of flour and four cups of water. Mix well and - you guessed it - wait.

My favorite way of making bread is to do this step of the process in the evening so that the morning after the next day I can have fresh bread for breakfast. You don’t have to do it quite so slowly, but that’s how I have gotten my best results.

After letting the dough rest in a bowl overnight take about two or three cups of it back to the jar to be the starter for your next bread. Then mix two teaspoons of salt and sugar and some oil to the remaining dough, and knead it well.

This is the second lesson in slowing down.

Baking bread is a slow process. And kneading is a slow process that requires your attention. When you feel like stopping the kneading you still need to go on for a few minutes, and all the while you need to put some effort to it, not just watch the clock and wait.

This is something I need to practice in my everyday life as well. For example in reading blogs I have developed a bad habit of just skimming through the posts without really reading most of them. If I take the kneading approach to that, I choose the posts that I want to read, and really concentrate in them to see what the writer wanted to say, and then think of how the ideas apply to my life. I’m still practicing but I think kneading is already making me better in concentrating.

So, after you have kneaded your dough for about 5 to 10 minutes while adding some flour, your dough should be soft and smooth, and ready for a new round of waiting. Leave the dough to raise for the day.

In the evening, come back to your dough and form the kind of breads you want. In the photo you can see how my breads usually look like, but it’s your bread so you decide. You are the master baker today.

When the breads look like you want them to, leave them alone for the night.

And when you wake up, you bake the bread.

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