Sourdough?

I don't exactly remember when I started baking bread regularly for our family. I had started baking challah a long time ago, I know that by the time my oldest was in high school I was doing at least some of the during the week bread baking.

I have always been intrigued by the idea of sourdough bread. However, whenever I read the directions about how to create a sourdough it just seemed so complicated that it seemed beyond my abilities.

I have fallen into a practice that may not be exactly sourdough but uses the leftover old dough as the yeast for new bread.  I thought I would share what I do. Let me know if this works for you.

At the beginning of the week, I start a new batch of dough using yeast. I put about 2 cups of water in a bowl, add a tsp of yeast and a Tbs of brown sugar and a bit of flour to the bowl and then let it sit. Usually, I start this as I make my morning coffee and then do the next step after breakfast. In my experience, this sit depending on my schedule and depending if I remembered that I had put up a batch of bread might be anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours and the bread still comes out great.

After breakfast, I add a Tbs of salt a glug of olive oil to the bowl and then start adding flour mixing and adding flour until the mixture is too difficult to mix using a spoon or spatula and then I begin to knead the dough with one hand. It's a bit tidier to knead inside the bowl. if I had someone assigned to clean up after me I would turn the dough out on the counter and knead on the counter.

Keep adding flour and kneading until the dough is as smooth as that proverbial baby's tushie. I will often add some other grains for texture, farina, or semolina flour or oats or whatever grain is in my pantry. If you use a hard grain like farro or wheat you may want to soak the grains in boiling water for 30 minutes or so before adding them to the bread dough.

Cover the bowl with a towel.  If you will be around to form the loaves within a few hours leave the bowl out on your kitchen counter. If you won't have time to fuss with the dough until tomorrow put the bowl in the fridge.

If you put the dough in the fridge it will need to sit out in room temperature for a couple of hours before you shape the bread.

When you are ready to shape the bread, add a bit more flour to the bowl and knead it again. The dough should deflate a bit.

You can use this dough to make pita or bagels or any bread shape you are in the mood to make.

Don't form all of the dough. leave a baseball-sized chunk in your bowl to make your next batch of bread.

Let the formed bread rise ( covered with a towel) and then bake- start the oven at 400 and then turn it down to 385 when you put the bread in the oven. Bake until done.

Now for the sourdough, add about a cup or so of water to the bowl with the lump of dough. Add a Tbs of brown sugar or molasses, roughly mix with your hand or a spoon, cover with a towel and put into your fridge.

You can see that I used molasses in this batch.

The next day the mixture in the bowl will look like this.

If you stir the mixture it will look kind of stringy and gross. It is supposed to look like that.

Add about two cups of water, a tablespoon ofsweetener ( brown sugar here) to the bowl. The water has slipped out of sight under the blob of dough.

Then add 1 Tbs salt.

Then oil

I added some semolina flour to this batch of bread

I then kneaded in enough flour to make a nice dough. The dough shouldn't be sticky if it is, add more flour.

I am not giving you an amount for the flour because what is needed depends on too many factors that you can't control, like the humidity in your kitchen and how the flour was milled and stored.  You add flour until there is enough.


When I formed rolled out of the dough I left behind enough dough to start the next batch of bread.

That's it.

It isn't rocket science. It's just a nice way to make delicious bread.