I hate to admit it, but there are many things I don’t know. I have some shortcomings. So, I tell my children, as they daily learn new skills and ideas, that it is not a fault to "not know everything". However, the answers are in a book - go research the topic until you have the answers you’re looking for.
I try to follow my own advice and I've found that learning to eat healthfully is best mastered in small segments. Each part should be conquered individually until the whole system is functioning without a thought. Looking at the entire "whole foods, traditional, healthy eating" may appear so overwhelming that you will never start. Over the last 13 years I have mastered (or at least can make) traditional sauerkraut, fermented pickles, cheese, keifer, various raw dairy products, canned foods, root cellar preservation, gardening, etc.
I have known for years about sourdough and before the children came along, had researched why sourdough was better for us versus our refined yeast breads of today. At one point I even played with sourdough, but it was quite sour, and I could never really get it to rise well.
I recently stopped in to visit a friend, and she mentioned she was getting ready to do a co-op class for students in our home school group on making sourdough bread. I immediately started asking questions about it. My dear friend ended up having to give her entire co-op class dictation twice that day!
She was very generous and sent me home with a jar of her precious starter and instructions. I can now do sourdough, sort of. There are still some kinks to work out. Recently I have made bread, pancakes, and cinnamon rolls! OH YUM!!!
I am doing things a bit different with this post. By good fortune, my friend agreed to share, for a third time, her sourdough secrets with our blog subscribers! I've only been working on this skill for a few weeks now and don't feel qualified to give you as well rounded an education as she can.
Not knowing from day to day whether or not there will be yeast in the grocery stores (let alone toilet paper) it is good to have a backup way to feed your family bread products. And it doesn't hurt to start the permanent switch to sourdough products to enjoy its nutritional benefits.
So from here on out, I will let K. M. take over the post. She is a fine example of local ingenuity and culture in this area. She has married into one of the foundational home schooling families in our valley. She has three adorable little boys. Her interests are traditional nutrition, home schooling, midwifery, and devoted wife and mommy.
“A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” Galatians 5:9
We've all heard from medical nutritionists, that we should use whole grains, as our ancestors did, in all of our quick-rise breads and hastily prepared foods, in place of refined flours, and we will be healthier for it. There are some important details left out in this prevalent line of thought. Our pre-industrialized ancestors soaked, fermented and cultured whole grains before making them into traditional foods.
Yeast, as most of us know it today, comes in a neat, pre-measured package for raising light breads. Yeast was discovered in a French lab around the mid-1800s, by Louis Pasteur, and it became commercially available in Europe by the end of that century. Fleischmanns were the first to introduce and commercially produce yeast in the United States. In 1876 they showcased the first commercially produced yeast bread at Philadelphia's Centennial Exposition.
However, various types of yeasts may be found in the air, soil, and even on our skin and contribute to traditionally prepared foods all over the world. Historically, these wild yeasts were used for making beverages, fermented veggies, and breads. The ancient Egyptians were the first to record their bread baking process, and this knowledge moved north into Greece. The Romans learned from the Greeks, and as the Roman Empire spread - so did bread! This bread was exclusively what we now call “sourdough.”
Our ancestor's naturally leavened sourdough bread is known today for its higher digestibility and more available nutrients. This is because when wheat is fermented, or soured, the result is the neutralization of phytic acid. Phytic acid protects the wheat’s fragile, living interior by binding to calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc in the intestinal tract. This blocks the absorption of these vital minerals.
Phytase is the enzyme needed to digest the phytic acid. Many animal's bodies naturally make this enzyme, and it also resides in the seed itself. Human bodies don’t produce phytase, so we make sourdough! By allowing grains to ferment, often with a culture or starter, the result is the disarmament of the seed’s protective barrier of phytic acid. This unlocks nutrients wheat has to offer, including the enzyme phytase. We use phytase to digest wheat and are rewarded with more nutrition, with every bite.
I wanted to give my young family the most nutritionally sound bread available. Armed with the above information, I determined that, unless I made the loaf of bread myself, there would be no more bread in my house! Only trouble was, I had never made bread before - wasn’t there something about rising? I vaguely remembered my mom scolding us about her bread falling as we stomped through the kitchen.
So I opened the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Morell. I learned that rye is high in phytase, which made it ideal for growing my own starter. I also learned freshly ground whole wheat is superior in flavor and nutritive qualities than a sack of flour that could be at least 10 months old. (Once ground, wheat goes rancid very quickly, and I can now recognize and taste the difference.)
I was honestly a little overwhelmed. So I asked my amazing baker friend to let me observe her sourdough bread-baking process. I left with a quantity of freshly ground red wheat, a quart of sourdough starter from her fridge, and the loan of her favorite sourdough book, “The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast”. And it worked!! That was four years ago, and I’ve never looked back. My family now enjoys sourdough birthday cake, muffins, pizza crust, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, crackers, English muffins, pie crusts, and, of course, bread!
If you’re new to whole wheat sourdough bread, I highly recommend the book mentioned above. Next, you will need to find a starter. Ask around your community and maybe you’ll stumble upon an inherited starter from Great-Grandmother Stella that someone will let you take a pinch from. Azurestandard.com and culturesforhealth.com are also good places to get sourdough starters.
What follows is my adapted process and recipe for laid back sourdough. It is a conglomeration of methods detailed in two books: “Sourdough” by Sarah Owens, “The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast” by Warnock and Richardson, and my own personal experience. Laid back sourdough may be adapted for a busy household, as it is fairly hands-off combined with a minimal amount of time needed to produce a fairly consistent loaf.
My favorite time to start a loaf of bread is after dinner. This way the bread has the cooler night-time hours to rise. Utilizing the cooler temperatures (65 to 70 degrees) causes a slower fermentation process that reduces the acidity of the loaf.
Grab your active starter. This starter is roughly five hours old. It was taken cold from the fridge, and hadn't been fed for a few days. This is what it should look like five hours after a feeding.
Mix starter, water, and flour together in a bowl.
Add flour slowly, starting with four cups, and increasing the amount in one half cup increments.
Stir until the dough starts pulling away from the bowl and forms a ball of its own. This is a very soft, almost sticky dough. Allow to autolyze, (this is the action of the sourdough breaking down the glutens of the wheat) for 20 minutes.
Then add the salt. Salt is a preservative and will inhibit the reaction of the bacteria and yeasts if you add it at the start of mixing. The 20-minute autolyzing process also gives the yeast a head start, if you will.
Then slap and fold several times until the dough begins to hold more shape.
Use water on your hands and counter, instead of flour, to keep the dough from sticking. You want the dough to be soft, and adding flour may make the dough stiffer.
Place in large bowl and cover with a damp cloth or plastic. Allow to sit (proof) for seven to12 hours (overnight) in coolish place.
The dough should look like this in the morning: You should see some bubbles coming to the surface of the dough. Pull it out of the bowl and place on counter top making sure to wet it first to keep the dough from sticking. At this point you may turn the dough into cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, hamburger buns, pizza crust, or bread. For bread I form loaves by dividing the dough into two lumps.
Smash one lump into a flat rectangular shape. Take the right-hand edge and fold it to the center of the rectangle.
Do the same with the left. Now from top to bottom, fold it in thirds a final time, and place the dough in a pan.
I like to use a buttered, lidded, stoneware baker or clay Rommertopf. Using the Rommertopf confines the steam escaping from the dough to the inside of the lidded baker. This produces the characteristics in texture that you envision of when you think of sourdough. Nice, golden crunchy crust - holey, but firm crumb. I fill the lid with water and allow it to soak while I am forming loaves.
The water is then dumped out and the lid placed on the bottom of the Rommertopf.
Loaf pans may be used, but the end product is slightly different as far as the crumb moisture and crust thickness. I am going to do a lidded one and an un-lidded one so you see the difference in crust structure when we take them out of the oven. The bread is then placed in a cold oven, and turned to 400 degrees to bake.
Depending on the oven, this could take up to an hour and 20 minutes. I go by my nose: If it suddenly smells like browning toast, check your loaves. Leaving the oven on, remove your smallest loaf, and gently slip it out of the pan. Tap the bottom - you're listening for a hollow sound. If it sounds hollow, it's ready to come out onto a cooling rack. Continue the same for each loaf.
As tempting as the loaf looks - don't cut into it! The baking process is not yet finished and you will lose valuable moisture if you slice it open prematurely.
Laid-back Sourdough Recipe
¾ to 1 Cup Starter
2½ Cups Water
5-6 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
Tools:
Large bowl, Danish dough whisk, dough scraper, loaf pans, baking sheets, Dutch oven.
Mix starter and water. Add 5 cups flour. Watch sides of bowl to stop sticking, dough will come away in a ball.
Allow to autolyze 20 minutes.
Add 2 tsp. Salt
Slap and fold 7 to 10 times. Use water, not flour.
Allow to proof 6 to 10 hours
Clay or stoneware: shape, place in buttered stoneware. Set in cold oven. Turn oven to 400 degrees. Bake approximately one hour - remember the browning toast smell!
Feeding starter: equal parts water and flour (I prefer rye, for the extra phytase) by weight. Approximately 1 cup water to 1½ cups flour. Keep in fridge or root cellar. Feed after use before returning to cool storage.
Resources:
Baking with Natural Yeast by Warnock and Richardson
Sourdough by Owens
Traditionalcookingschool.com
Culturesforhealth.com
Further reading:
Phytic acid:
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/food-features/be-kind-to-your-grains-and-your-grains-will-be-kind-to-you/
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/living-with-phytic-acid/
https://embracing-motherhood.com/the-dangers-of-phytic-acid-and-what-to-do-about-it/
“And again he said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened." - Luke 13:20-21