Already have your 'Mother' starter for Sourdough, now what?

Bonjour mes amis!!

Hola mis amigos!!

Long time no see, right?

Wondering what's with the french and spanish greetings? Well, the french is because I have been living in France for last 5 months and Spanish because I have been binge watching Money Heist !! I know it's been a long time between my last blog and now. You know, how you plan your life and life says, "Yeah, right!" But I will give you a gist of what's happened so far with me.

I came to France, the land of stinky cheeses and delicious wines, to study the art of making French Pastries, as this country is know for. Amidst the chaos of changing profession, I couldn't find the words inspiring enough to put down here for you to read. Sure there were stories and experiences, but I stuck to doing micro-blogging via my Instagram profile - https://www.instagram.com/thenomadicbonvivant/

Why now? Like everyone, I have ample of time on my hand. Thanks to #COVID19 pandemic's forced stay-cation enforced by the governments all over the world. And honestly,to my own surprise, I am enjoying my quarantine! I know it's been a while since the lock down started, at least in Europe (France) and I have been ensuring that I stick to a disciplinarian routine to avoid from going crazy!

Hold your pants and don't raise your eyebrows on 'what kind of disciplinarian routine'! Well when they announced about the lock down, I was pretty sure that it was going to last for quite some time and the only way to cope with it is, to fill your day with definite routine. So I ensured that I woke up on time, I meditated and I did some exercise. In fact, I discovered the benefits of doing Yoga!

As to my kitchen shenanigans, I explored them too and have been righteously advancing on the path to a holey Sourdough bread. When the lock down started many people arrived on the doors of the mighty Sourdough. Many bakers and bloggers started giving instructions and going live on Instagram guiding Sourdough virgins on the process of making Sourdough Mother Starter. I know the journey of Sourdough can be equally exciting and frustrating. I have been there 3 years ago and I am not ashamed to say that I am still learning the nitty-gritty of the Sourdough. Because it is such a mercurial yet predictably good product, that you can't help but be mesmerized and obsessed with it. So in this blog post, I am going to walk you through with how I maintain my starter, percentages of the composition of Sourdough bread (believe me its all science) and steps to baking a perfect holey sourdough boule.

Maintaining a starter

There are lot of sources available on internet on how to do this. Many say refresh the starter twice week. Some obsessive compulsive Sourdough bakers do it almost every day. But home bakers like you and me need to have a optimum starter maintenance schedule, that suits us and is favorable to the sourdough too. So here is what I do ~ I refresh my starter once a week. Irrespective of the fact how many times I bake Sourdough bread (on an average twice a week).

There is nothing wrong in refreshing your starter multiple times a week. But honestly, I feel it is unnecessary because I can get equally good bread without putting myself through much hassle. And think of all the excess sourdough discard that gets generated. If you are a kind of person who don't mind throwing it away, then good for you. But if you are anything like me, whose heart breaks at the thought of throwing it away and who doesn't want to eat everything made up of Sourdough discard then this schedule sounds perfect.

In fact, I am pretty sure the Sourdough loyalists will be ostracized to know that some of the Sourdough bakers that I know, refresh their starter only once a month and have a separate mini fridge for their Sourdough shenanigans. The dedicated fridge to Sourdough ensures that the temperature of the fridge doesn't fluctuate much (as it is not as frequently used as the regular fridge), there are less items in fridge to consume the cold/energy of the fridge and there are no other organisms playing with your sourdough culture.

I mainly refresh my mother starter 1 day before preparing my levain. (What is levain? I will cover it in next section, but I will give you a glimpse) Because when you prepare your levain, you are again mixing a part of the mother starter, thus ensuring that there is enough food for your microbes and it is not becoming highly acidic (which impacts the flavor of Sourdough bread. There is a lot of science on this, for which I will recommend you to read the book of Vanessa Kimbell - The Sourdough School)

The process of maintaining a sourdough starter is same as the one for refreshing your starter while achieving the Mother. What I do is, I take 12g of Mother starter in a small bowl, add 50 g of water to it- Mix them and pour it in the glass jar that I use for maintaining my starter (I use only 1 jar, so when I scoop out the 12g mother, I remove the starter left in the jar and move it to my sourdough discard container. I wash the jar and reuse it.)- Add 50 g of Flour and mix it with spatula or spoon till no dry flour remains (again there is whole lot of science into which flours to use, but to simplify it I would say any. However, I would advise you to stick to the type of Flour that you use in maintaining your starter and making your levain. It shows in the flavor of the bread. For more information, read The Sourdough School) and mix again & leave it at room temperature with its lid open and resting on the mouth of the jar.

And just like the process of making the Mother starter, you let it rise at room temperature (ideally 25*C) till the mix is more than doubled in volume. The temperature per say doesn't affect much, apart from the time taken to double in volume. After the starter has doubled, keep it in the deep corner of fridge till you need it to bake a bread.

Making Levain

Science, science, science....there is a lot of science involved in Sourdough bread! But I will try to explain it in a layman language. Levain is nothing but part of your Mother starter, refreshed fresh to carry highly active wild yeast. You can make the levain the same way as you make your Mother starter with the help of your Mother, Flour, Water and a part of the Mother starter (whoaa, that was a lot of Mothers!)

The levain is always made in ratios or percentages of, Mother starter: Water: Flour. The ratio depends on when you want to bake your bread, because the amount of water (also the temperature of water) affects the time required for the levain to rise and definitely the flavor of the bread.

Typically, if you are using APF or white flour to make Levain and if you use the ratio of 1:1:1 then the levain takes about 3-4 hours to rise (also depending on ambient temperature and the water temperature). Also the bread will be more sour as the wild yeast,water and flour are in same quantity. If you use the ratio of 1:2:2 then the levain takes about 5-6 hours to rise. And for the ratio of 1:4:4, the levain takes about 8 hours to rise.

However, I have stopped relaying on the clock when it comes to monitoring the levain. See the images below, top left is one where the levain was freshly mixed. The ratio that I use to prepare the levain depends on how the schedule of my day is and when do I start making the levain. For ex. here I started at 10am and wanted to finish bulk fermentation early in the day (it would still take me 10pm to finish it) so I mixed the levain in the ratio of 1:1:1. A secret (not so secret after I write it here) tip is, I also add drops of honey in my levain. It helps in fastening the fermentation process of making Levain.

The image on the top right is 1 hour after the levain was mixed. Bottom left is after 3.5 hrs of mixing the levain. Here you can see the wild yeast making bubbles on the surface which says my levain is near about ready. The last image, on bottom right, is just before use. There are much more bubbles and the surface is uneven. This was after 4.5 hours of mixing my levain.

Float test

Float test

How to do a float test? Take some water in a glass, scoop out the levain in spoon and drop it in the water. If your levain is ready then it will float in water, if not then it will sink to the bottom.

Many bakers including myself feel no. Because sometimes for some God forsaken reason, the levain drops to the bottom of the glass, even though its been mixed for more than sufficient time and when you use it in the bread, the bread turns out mighty fine. So I just go by the surface activity of my levain

Percentages of Sourdough Composition

The science of Sourdough is magically mathematical and that's the reason why I love it so much! The flour (even if you are using variety of flour) is always considered as the base for calculating the percentage of the components in Sourdough. So technically, if I am making a sourdough with white flour of one type only then it constitutes as 100% of my base. If the total flour is 150 g out of which 100g is white flour and 50g is whole grain flour, then white flour constitutes (100/150*100) to 66.67% and whole grain flour will be 33.33%.

Thus whenever you hear or read the terms like 80% strong white flour, 10% rye flour and 10% spelt; it means firstly you need to decide the total weight of flour you are going to use for your bread (it depends on how many people you want to feed). So if you want to make a bread of 200g total flour, then 80% of 200g i.e. 160g of strong white flour, 10% of 200g i.e. 20g of rye flour and 10% of 200g i.e. 20g of spelt. 160+20+20 = 200g of total flour weight

The hydration is also calculated as the percentage of total flour weight. It includes not just water but whatever liquid you want to use in your bread.

Thus, if you read, 80% hydration (for 200g of total flour) then it means 80% of 200g i.e. 160g of water.

Hydration of the bread in itself requires a separate blog, but I will try to simplify as much as possible. There is again a lot of science about what percentage of water to use for what kind of flour. Even the temperature of water is governed by the Desired Dough Temperature (DDT) /Final Dough Temperature (FDT) which I will cover in a separate blog. However, ideally what I use is ~

If I am making a bread with APF then I stick to hydration of about 70-75%
If I am making a bread with Strong white flour (type 65 in France) then I stick to hydration of 80%
If I am making a bread with whole grain flour then I need much higher hydration, about more than 90%
If I am making a bread with combination of Strong white flour and whole grain flour then I keep the hydration between 80-90%

Of course, this will come with experience of handling the dough. And you start at the lowest spectrum of your hydration. If you feel the dough is not extensible, you increase the hydration slowly while mixing. We also use the similar percentage calculation for salt to be added in the Sourdough. I always add 2.1% of Salt. Moving on to the actual process of Sourdough! (Pheww, I know there is a looottttt, but it is very interesting and once you start baking it becomes muscle memory, trust me. And once you start eating Sourdough, no other bread is good enough for you!). I will capture the steps below in points and elaborate on them in another blog, because lets face it....it is becoming a thesis.

1. Autolyse (Just mix flour and water and rest it for gluten to start developing)

2. Bulk fermentation

i. Mix the levain and rest the dough.

ii. Mix the salt and rest the dough.

iii. Stretch and fold 3-4 times, resting the dough in between each stretch and fold.

iv. Laminate the dough; here you can add extra flavours to your bread like cheese, chorizo, bacon etc.

v. Coil fold 3-4 times till you feel the resistance of the dough, resting the dough between each coil fold

3. Preshaping

4. Shaping

5. Retard the dough to fridge overnight proofing

6. Next day morning, bake the bread for 15-20 minutes at 240*C and 15 mins at 200*C

I know its lot to take in at first glance. But road to heaven was never easy right? But the road to Sourdough will definitely be, once you start your Sourdough journey. In my next blog I will capture each of the above process in detail but not scientifically because I think there is already too much information about that on Internet. So my blog is just going to be like a cheat sheet to a Holey Sourdough. Oh and the boule featured in the photos at the top of the blog is my freshly baked Chocolate and Chili Sourdough

May the bread force be with you!