Sourdough Continued

Last week I posted and tweeted and facebooked something about making a “true” sourdough (these are crazy times indeed). I then asked the twitterati and facebookerati for their thoughts on what defines a good sourdough, and I remembered the tricky business that is “sourdough.”

To bakers, a sourdough means a bread made with only flour, water and salt. The leavening comes from a levain culture, or a sourdough mom, or any other term you might know. The levain culture is just that – a science experiment of yeast and bacteria – and by maintaining certain conditions bakers can develop different flavors. Depending on the flour used to feed the culture, the fermentation temperature, and frequency of feedings, we can favor the production of lactic acid (buttery tasting) or acetic acid (tangy to vinegary).

So here’s the rub – lots of people think of sourdough as San Francisco Sourdough, and that’s quite a sour sourdough. Most of the bakers in my world don’t appreciate a super sour bread – it overwhelms the flavor of the grain. But if you had a San Francisco sourdough on the best vacation of your life and eating a very tangy loaf of bread takes you back to that, then that is the absolute perfect version of this bread. Who’s right? To my mind, no-one is. Food is about enjoyment and that’s the end of that.

As a baker, when I say “true” sourdough, I simply mean one that has no commercial yeast in it. So I’m working on a sourdough for the market with just flour, salt and yeast. And my main challenge is timing – most sourdoughs take about 6-8 hours from mixer to oven, and I have about 6-8 in my night before the market. My ideal sourdough is mostly about texture – chewy crust (but not too thick – a sin of many sourdoughs is an impenetrable crust, a by-product of an overly acidic levain culture), an open and toothsome crumb, the kind of bread that grills superbly (crispy-chewy). I think I’ll be using some rye levain (for tangy spiciness) and a liquid white levain (for the buttery tastiness).

If there are bakers out there interested in sourdoughs, give me a shout, I’ve got access to lots of esoteric information. And if you want to start your own culture, please do – just don’t buy any of that powdered stuff that claims to be Egyptian or San Franciscan or whatever, because once you feed it with your local flour the flora changes and becomes Minneapolitan. And when you start your culture, know that any yeasts that don’t come from grain will die off (for example, grape yeasts don’t like to eat flour). We are always happy to share our levain at the shop, so if you want to just get baking already! give me a call and I’ll hook you up.