When I first tried baking sourdough bread four years ago it was anything but easy. I gave up several times. Moldy sourdough starter, bricks and sourdough bread with large irregular holes and tight crumb. Not really edible let alone great looking. Sound familiar?
Four years later after my first sourdough bread, I can now clearly see how easy sourdough baking can be. So today, I want to share what my biggest challenges were and how I overcame them.
1. Sourdough starter does not activate or takes too long to activate.
I used store-bought all-purpose flour to make my first sourdough starter and then cut and fed, cut and fed, etc. But nothing happened. I threw it away and started over – many times before it finally worked and was stable enough that I could use it to make a sourdough bread.
One of the reasons your starter doesn't become active is because the flour you're using has no life – no wild yeast, no bacteria, no enzymes. I advise you to use whole grain, organic, unbleached or home-milled flour. I like to buy my flour at the mill so I always know I'm getting the best quality flour and it's also a great way to support local farmers.
For the past couple of years, my favorite way to start sourdough starters from scratch has been to use whole grain rye flour. Rye ferments very quickly, so you can have your starter ready and stable in just 3 days and there is no wasted flour due to overfeeding. Once your rye starter is active, you can always use it to make starters using other flours (white wheat flour, spelled starter). You can download a step-by-step guide on how to prepare the starter of thakra dough from scratch here.
Fully active sourdough starter in just 3 days
2. I don't know when my dough is ready to put in the oven.
This took me the longest to figure out. My loaves were either airtight (see photo below) with a tight crumb or insulated with no oven spring. Open crumbles and beautifully colored crusty loaves were more or less random. I was confused because the recipes I found online said to let the bread rise for 2-4 hours at room temperature or 8-14 hours in the fridge. OK, but when exactly (or roughly) is the dough ready for the oven (besides seeing the change in the volume of the bread)? Years have passed, I after much trial and error find that the poking test has served me best (besides seeing the difference in the volume of the bread). To use the clot test method, simply make an opening in the dough and observe its reaction. If the indentation returns quickly, your dough is not ready yet, let it rise longer.
3. The crumb of my sourdough bread is tight or has only small holes. I want big holes! How can I make large holes?
Factors that affect the opening of crumbs are:
– the hydration level of your dough (amount of water). The lower the hydration lever, the tighter the crumb. If you use whole grain flours that absorb more water than white flours, use more water.
– how do you handle the dough after mixing,
– how firm your flour is (with low gluten flour we usually don't notice much crumb opening).
– how well developed and stretched your dough is (well developed dough has stronger gluten strands that can hold bubbles or carbon dioxide better). You can develop your dough by cooking, stretching and folding, slapping and folding, long cold fermentation…), etc.
4. Baking sourdough bread takes so much time that I have to be at home all the time.
I like simplicity most of the time, so being at home all day making bread was not an option for me. Well, it was in the beginning, when I was still learning and doing stretches and folds every half hour (which I still do if I'm at home, just for therapeutic purposes). There are many ways to bake sourdough bread in a way that fits into our (busy) schedule without having to give up the things we love or need to do during the day.
And yes, it takes longer to make a sourdough bread than it does with commercial yeast – but here's the trick – you can do other things while the dough is fermenting. I ferment most of the bread while I'm at work or while I'm sleeping and bake it when I get home or when I wake up. You can check out these sourdough bread recipes: cornbread, whole wheat sourdough bread, sourdough rye bread with sourdough.
5. Sourdough bread will taste really sour.
This is quite subjective and highly dependent on many, many factors. I eat a lot of other fermented foods, such as fermented vegetables AND yogurt, so sourness is not a problem. But hey, even though it's called sourdough bread, it doesn't have to be really sour – you can use really fresh start made with white flour, you can ferment your dough for less time at room temperature, use white flour for the dough. ,…
6. Sweet Sourdough Goods? No way!
Yes, there is a way – a highway, actually! The easiest sweet products you can make are pancakes, waffles or other desserts where you can easily use up your excess starter if you have it. And if you're feeling more Olympian, you can do these fluffy chocolate sourdough.
What was your biggest challenge with sourdough baking or the thing you wish you knew more about? Let me know in a comment below.
