Adventures in Sourdough; Chapter One - The ?Mother Sponge?

I mean, who doesn’t like fresh bread right? If you are into food - eating it, cooking it, growing it, or reading about it, you cannot deny the power of a warm slice of fresh bread. Its an elemental pleasure for us humans, undoubtedly tied to thousands of years of learned appreciation.

I’ve always wanted to learn to make my own breads. Like my run at home brewed beer (might have to get back into that as well!) or stabs at gardening, making bread seems fairly straight forward with a huge upside. After the planning, assemblage of ingredients, and carving out the room in your day to get after it, the process unfolds over the hours and becomes as enjoyable as the desired product.

As with making beer or gardening, making bread is pretty simple. Well, at least in the ingredients department. A closer look or second thought on the subject will very quickly lead you to a whole world of possibilities, from simple to extremely complicated. Its fun comparing gardening and home brewing to making bread; you could also do it with cheese making, collecting honey, pressing cider, etc… The processes are simple, but the possibilities are endless.

After living in California this past fall and eating foods mostly from the valley I lived in, as well as cooking with some incredibly talented cooks, the desire to learn to make bread came to a head. Maybe it was the fresh multigrain batarde (slightly wider baguette) we would pick up almost daily to make french toast or the grilled cheese (with a smear of locally made serrano chili goat cheese!) we would snack on every afternoon. Regardless, the thought occurred: “how tough can it be to make something THAT good?”

So, here in the middle of another stormy Utah winter…the process begins for Andy. A good friend from Cali recently sent me a sourdough starter in the mail knowing that I was hankering. The small paper packet contained a print out on how to start and care for your “mother sponge”, as well as a very simple recipe for making sourdough. Of course, there was also a small packet with sourdough culture and unbleached, hard white flour - the “starter”.

After a few conversations with my step-bro Paul (who is an incredible baker) I learned that if well cared for (not exposed to too much wild yeast or left unfed for weeks), your sourdough starter can last for years, forever potentially. Some bakeries in San Fran can trace their starters to before Cali’s statehood, even well before the ‘49 gold rush. You can also freeze a certain amount of it and pull it out months later to “restart” your starter. Having recently moved down canyon and having my own kitchen, the time had come to crack it open.

Visit this link to see the product I am using: www.mccornbread.com. Its a San Francisco style sourdough, which by all accounts is the mother land of sourdough bread. Read more here on that subject.

One evening before going out I ripped it open, got my bread flour out, warmed up three cups of water and combined everything. Wrapped it up, put it in the oven with the light on (slightly warmer then room temp), and let it sit for a day. Came home after work the next night and I had a bubbling, “sour” smelling concoction. Now more then a week later, the “mother” has been fed several times and sent to the fridge for some hibernation.

Ingredients for starter:

Mix em up in a plastic or wood bowl (metal apparently gives “off” flavors), let sit in a warm environment (light on inside the oven) for 24 hours. Once the starter has begun to “ferment” you’ll easily be able to see if you were successful…it’ll be bubbling and looking quite alive.

As for feeding it, you simply remove a cup of the starter and throw it away. You replace that with a half cup of bread flour mixed with a half cup of warm water. You have to bring the starter to room temp before doing this, so if refrigerating the “mother” be sure to pull it out for a time and then feed it.

This is all new to me and I have not yet made any bread, but I am taking good care my “mother” and planning a day in the kitchen very soon. More importantly, the process has begun on what should be another fruitful endeavor into my culinary curiosities. I look forward to giving friends a loaf of bread that I made, I look forward to making my own English muffins in the morning. I am now in a small way even more engaged with the foods I am eating, its exciting. I find myself now digging around the internet looking for bread ideas, feeding my knowledge of the possibilities.

If it would only stop snowing in Utah!!! More to come…But for now - some other cool bread ideas and sites: