Sourdough

 Since the pandemic started, and quarantine has come and gone, our lives have, in some ways become more restricted. We don't go out as much or travel so far as in former times. We got used to staying at home and "entertaining" ourselves.

I did a lot of patchwork: here is a quilt I made.

I did some jigsaw puzzles.

AND I started to make sourdough. I've been making bread pretty well all my life, with bought yeast; either blocks of fresh or sachets of fast-proving. There was a shortage of yeast in the supermarkets during the quarantine but I had quite a few at home so a number of times I made a loaf. It's a very satisfying thing to do. I'd thought about trying sourdough, but it seemed to be too time-consuming. However, I had plenty of time to consume, so I did plenty of investigation online and found some instructions to follow. There is ever such a lot of stuff online about sourdough, especially in Youtube, where you can spend hours watching experts telling you how to do it. In the end I chose a page of River Cottage Sourdough, printed out three and a half pages of instructions on how to make first the sourdough culture and then using the culture to bake bread. 

It's actually quite easy. You take a big glass jar and put 50g of flour in it. Mix in 50g of water. I use filtered water, but it probably doesn't matter much. Cover the top of the jar but don't screw the lid down. Leave at room temperature.  In exactly 24 hours, add another 50g flour and water, mix thoroughly and leave. You repeat this for a total of 5 days, by the end of which you have 500g of starter, hopefully bubbly and "fermented" smelling. Apparently sometimes there's a smelly dark liquid known as "hooch" which can form and put you off completely by its stink of old socks but you just pour it off and carry on. It didn't happen to me; I may have given up if it had!

Then you leave it for another 24 hours and then we get to the part which initially put me off: the instructions tell you to throw 90% of your starter away! What a waste! Keep the 90%, the discard in a jar; it can be used in a number of ways. 

Back to the 10%. Now you prepare for baking, by feeding the starter, in exactly the same way as before, however much you need for your recipe: if the recipe calls for 100g of starter you put 50g flour, 50g water; if the recipe says 150 it will be 75g/75g etc.

Mark where the starter reaches in the jar and leave it until it's twice as high. (dont screw the lid on because it could explode; we've got breathing organisms in there!)  I marked it in red pen, and you can see how it's bubbling and rising. While that's going on, there's a step which I've found useful; it's not in the River Cottage instructions, but many websites recommend the "autolyse". This means you mix your flour and water and leave them to stand. The River Cottage ingredients are:

 400g strong white bread flour

100g wholemeal bread flour

350ml water, (I measure mine in grammes)

150g active sourdough starter

7.5-10g fine salt

For my first tries I halved the recipe and more recently I've been making 75% of this. They say "organic" and "stoneground", but this is Spain and pandemic and I can't be bothered! I use strong white, spelt, rye and a nice multicereals mix I can only buy in Eroski. Then comes the fun bit, developing the gluten network. I've always enjoyed kneading my bread dough, and you don't really do it with sourdough. You stretch it and fold. Once the starter is added, you begin a series of pulling the glob of dough out of the bowl and letting it stretch; as you have to use both your hand to do this I can't take photos too! Put the salt in. Stretch and fold. Give the bowl a quarter turn. Repeat, a total of four times. Cover and leave for 30 minutes. do this a total of four times, then put your ball of dough tidily into a floured banneton (basket) 

Cover and leave overnight in the fridge. The basket gives support to the dough; sourdough is quite floppy!

The next morning get it out and let it stand for a while, then turn on the oven-as hot as possible. I don't have a Dutch oven (casserole) so I need to follow plan B which means when you put the bread in the oven you put a tray of boiling water in to make steam.

Turn out the dough, cut a slice on the top and bake for 30 ins with some steam, then 15 less hot and no steam.

It looks nice, doesn't it?

By the way, the grapes are from our own vine; it's been the best harvest ever!