a slow rise

April 16, 2014 Megan Rodriguez

Last week I told you about my dear sourdough starter and the fun that I've had getting it a-bubbling. This week I thought I'd share my bread making process with you. As I mentioned last week, I found this bread recipe at the end of last year and have tweaked it a bit to better fit my bread-making style.

Bread making, for me at least, has always been an idealist thing. The idea of having only homemade bread in the house, is lovely, but let's be honest...who has time for that!? Bread making is such a process--and a mess maker. And while I've always loved that process, it's never been a spur of the moment kind of project in my life. That is, until I met this recipe!

Not only have we come to love the flavor of this bread, but I truly love the easy process! All you do is mix it with your fingers in a bowl, let it rise for 12 hours (or so), knead it into a ball, let it rise again for 12 hours (or so), shape it into a ball, let it rise again (1-12 hours), then bake it at 350 degrees for 40 min. No messy countertops. No greased bowls or pans. No fancy ingredients. Just flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter. It's a marvelous thing!

Below is the recipe and pictures of the process. Please know that this recipe is not my original recipe. I've tweaked the Nourished Kitchen's No-knead Sourdough Recipe just a bit, because it seems to work better for me.

Sourdough Bread

3 cups flour (I use a mixture of wheat and bread flour--typically 2 cups wheat, 1 cup bread)

2 teaspoons salt (I typically use sea salt)

1 cup bubbly sourdough starter

1/2 cup to 1 cup water (I prefer filtered water)

Put all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix with your fingers until all of the flour is moist and mixed in. I usually do a little light kneading in the bowl, just to get the flour all worked in. Cover and let rise for 12 hours or so. I typically do this in the evening before bed. It takes about 10 minutes to mix up the dough and then feed my sourdough starter.

In the morning, my dough looks like this. It has risen a bit and is a little sticky. At this point, you should gently press it down to get any air out of it. Then knead it into itself a few times so that it forms a nice ball. If it's too sticky, work a bit of flour into it. Cover and let it rise for another 12 hours or so. I usually do this step in the morning before I head out the door. This takes about a minute or two.

When I get home from work, my dough has doubled in size and is ready to be shaped into a loaf. Prepare your baking stone by sprinkling corn starch or flour onto it. You can also do this on a pizza peel or counter and then slide the risen bread onto a hot stone in the oven. However, I'm all about the easiness of this process and so I skip that step. It leaves me with a weird looking loaf sometimes that occasionally sticks to my stone, but I don't care.

Press your dough down gently to real ease the air. Then shape it into a ball (or boule) by pulling the top down to the bottom side of the ball and gently working it into the bottom of the dough. This should just take a couple of minutes, as you don't want to over work the dough. Once it's in a ball-like shape, place it onto the cornstarch on your baking stone. Cover lightly and let rise. The rise time can be anywhere from 1 to 12 hours. We have found that the flavor and texture improves with a longer rise time. However, I've had times where I've only let it rise for 30 minutes or so, and I still ended up with a loaf of bread...

I sometimes do this step when I get home from work and then bake it in the evenings or sometimes I do this step right before bed and let it rise all night. It just depends on what the day looks like, and what our bread needs are.

The longer rise times will produce a loaf that has doubled in size--leaving a lighter, airier loaf. Once you are ready for baking, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and put a few 1/2 inch cuts in the top of your loaf. This will help it to keep a nice shape as it bakes. Bake for 40 minutes.

After the bread comes out of the oven, move it to a cooling rack to cool. Once you cut into it, keep it wrapped tightly to keep it from drying out. We find that our bread tastes best if we eat it within 5 days, which is usually not difficult to do. It's so yummy!

Because sourdough is easier for your body to digest (due to the fermented dough and long rise times), we find that we can eat a lot of it and still feel great--which is not always true with other types of bread (especially store-bought bread). This means we use this bread for everything, and love it!

Happy bread making!

my kitchen companion

April 9, 2014 Megan Rodriguez

This bubbly and pungent jar of sourdough starter has become quite the kitchen companion over the past few months, and I must say, I love it!

I started making bread from scratch this past summer when my husband and I decided that I would take the summer off from teaching to relax and travel for music gigs with him. In an effort to put myself to good use, I thought I would try to save money by making as many things as I could instead of buying them. Bread was the first one on the list. Throughout the summer I tried a few different wheat loaves, some we loved, some we pretended to like, until we finally landed on a few favorites. The bread making continued into the fall, even after I went back to work. Once I was back to teaching full time, I found it a little difficult to find time to make bread. While it's really quite an easy and not a very hands-on, time consuming task, it does require larger portions of time at home with all that resting and rising business. I eventually fell into somewhat of a rhythm and was able to mostly stay on top of our bread consumption needs.

As the fall progressed, though, I started to read more and more about the benefits of sourdough bread. I knew I loved the flavor of sourdough, but the idea of keeping a starter going seemed like a little too much. I eventually came across this recipe, though, and decided to give it a try.

There are a couple of ways to get a starter going. The first way requires just flour and water. You mix them together and they pull wild yeast from the air and start to ferment. For the second method, you throw a little bit of store bought yeast into the flour/water mixture to help speed up the process. The thought of starting without yeast sounded fun to me, so that's what I did!

My starter developed some nice bubbles right away, but it took almost two months to really get it going. We ate many a loaf of rather dense (and interesting) bread throughout those two months and a few of those loaves even graced our family Christmas tables. However, the day eventually came when my dough not no rose, but it actually doubled in size! That was the day when I knew I had officially entered the world of sourdough. The flavor that developed over that time was also well-worth the wait. Our sourdough bread (a tweaked version of the recipe above) is now a much loved part of our daily meals. In the pictures below you can see how much my starter now rises (and falls) after I feed it (more on feeding below).

So, with that I'd like to leave you with this simple sourdough starter recipe. It's nothing out of the ordinary, just the basics.

Sourdough Starter

1/4 cup flour (I prefer white bread flour)

1/4 cup water (I prefer filtered)

Put the flour and water in a glass jar or container and whisk them together briskly, mixing air into the mixture. Cover the jar with lid, piece of cloth, or paper towel and set in a warmish place in your kitchen. Let is rest for 12 hours or so.

After 12 hours, feed the starter by adding another 1/4 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of water. Whisk together again, cover, and let rest for another 12 hours. Continue this process for 3-5 days, until bubbles are regularly forming and the mixture has a pungent, sour smell. At this point, you can start using the starter. You can also switch to feeding the starter once per day. If you find that you have sourdough overflowing from your jar (a very real and literal possibility), you can move it to a larger container, give some away, or you can slow the process down by slowing your starter in the fridge and just feeding it once per week. If you store it in the fridge, just take it out 12 hours or so before you want to use it, feed it, and let it rest. This will reactivate the yeast.

When you are first getting your starter going, you may have a clear liquid that develops on the top of your mixture. This is alcohol from the fermentation process. If this happens, just decrease the amount of water that you add when you feed it and it should solve the problem. Also, remember that it may take up to a couple of months for the yeast in your starter to be strong enough to really cause the dough to rise.

You can also find some other helpful information on the Nourished Kitchen's site as well as The Kitchn.

If you decide to enter the world of sourdough, have fun with it! And remember to be patient and enjoy the process!

just a few....

April 7, 2014 Megan Rodriguez

I love to cook and then, of course, post pictures of the food I've made. Because of that, people often ask me where I find my recipes. When asked this question, I always feel like I should have a great answer--I mean, I do cook a lot! However, my answer often comes across as kind of lame. "Cookbooks...? Yeah, I guess most of my recipes just come from my cookbooks." This is true. I use do my cookbooks a lot. However, I really use just a few of them to make the delicious go-to recipes that I make on a regular basis.

I got to thinking about this recently as I read the book Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. While the premise of her book is summed up in the title, she also spends a lot of time talking about how to live with less. Since reading the book, I've been slowly decluttering and getting rid of things that I just really don't need.

My cookbooks were one of the first places I started and it happened after I got three new ones for Christmas. I went to add my three new and exciting books to my collection and realized that my little top of the cupboard spot was rather full and my little kitchen had no more space to offer. Purge, I must purge, I thought. So, purge I did. I gave some away that I really didn't use/like/need. I moved a few to the basement that I really only used for holidays and special occasions. I also moved a few to the basement that I didn't feel like I could give away just yet, but I also didn't need/want them. I'm sure they'll make it into the donations pile in the next year or so. I also had three years worth of RealSimple magazines that I had saved for the yummy recipes. I saved the November/December issues (for holiday inspiration), but gave the rest away to be read or cut up into art projects.

What I was left with was a rather small, yet rich and simple collection of my favorite go-to books.

Having fewer cookbooks has made my menu planning a lot easier. When making grocery shopping/menu plans, I'm able to grab two or three of my favorites, along with my recipe box, and sit down for a much quicker planning process. A few of the reasons that this simple collection works for me is that I have books for specific purposes. I have my trusty Betty Crocker, that I wouldn't live without for all of my basic baking, roasting, cooking needs. I have The Epicurious Cookbook, organized by season, with it's inspirational pictures and absolutely fabulous recipes. The Homemade Pantry, which encourages me continually to assess what I'm buying versus what I'm making at home from whole foods. And my newest favorite, The New Midwestern Table, which uses local ingredients and constantly reminds me of why I love Minnesota and it's food.

We live in a world filled with options. We are accustomed to options. Yet, as Bea Johnson states in her book, options make life more complicated and require more time for us to decide which option we want. Simplifying my cookbooks has made my kitchen just a bit simpler and has made my time spent in the kitchen just a bit easier. I'm sure I'll continue to add books to the collection over the years, but my goal is to keep the size of the collection the same by replacing the old with the new.

How about you? Where do you find your recipe inspiration?