Adventures in Bread Making
- Ashley
- Nov 19, 2019
- 5 min read
This past weekend, I achieved what I consider to be the next best thing to enlightenment: the perfect sourdough loaf. The weekend before, I had tried to cram making this loaf into 8-12 hours, and it flopped. Severely. Well, to be fair, it didn't rise enough to flop. It stayed a heavy, dense brick of a mess that I stared at in disbelief.
"This was . . . weird," I remember saying through a stuffed nose on my Instagram stories. The recipe I used called for barely any kneading. I added the salt to the dough one step too early. And, my sourdough starter didn't rise. It was a big mess. (Also, if you don't understand any of my terms, I'll try to link or explain as I go.)
But this past weekend, I was determined to get it right. So, in down times at work last week, I researched. I looked up every article that came up in a Google search. I watched countless sourdough videos on YouTube. I read, and read, and read until I found a straightforward, simple recipe that showed me what to do: Alex "French Guy Cooking" on YouTube. I've watched his video so many times at this point, I could probably recite it back to you word-for-word. I wrote down his steps on a sheet of paper, and set an alarm for Friday morning when I would remove my sourdough starter from the refrigerator. His only took four hours to rise, so I figured that would be enough time for me to work it, let it proof, and then do the second proof in the refrigerator overnight.
But oh man, how I was wrong.
My sourdough starter took 13 hours to double in size. I was awake at 3:30 AM shaping my dough to go into the fridge for eight hours. KNEAD-less to say (haha), by the time my loaf came out of the oven at 3:00 the next afternoon, I was exhausted, and hoping and praying for a perfect loaf - which, I am happy to report, it absolutely was. While pictures don't do the loaf justice, this thing was probably a good 12" wide and 6-7" tall. She THICC.
The crumb inside was perfect and airy. The crust on the outside was golden brown and had a beautifully sour smell to it. I was in ecstasy.
So when I sliced a piece for my mom the next day, toasted it up, and slathered some butter on it, she asked me how I got into all of this. She is a champion non-baker, and no one else in my family really cooks or bakes regularly. I thought back to it, and it came down to a few moments that revolved around the Great British Bake Off and Jenna Fischer.
I began watching the Great British Bake Off at the end of 2018, and it was by far one of the best decisions I made that year. It not only led to me bonding with a lot of people at work, and with my neighbor Kristine, but it showed me that hard-looking bakes are possible at home. That, followed shortly after by watching Jenna Fischer take on Bread Baking for Beginners by Bonnie Ohara, made me brave enough to try making bread on my own. My husband and I saw that there were more health benefits than buying bread, and it would at least be worth a try to see if it was something we could do long-term. Bread from the store can either be raw, contain a lot of preservatives, or hinder digestion. Sourdough loaves are known for being great on your body's digestive system because of how the fermentation process breaks down the nutrients once they enter the body. Making bread at home seemed like a no-brainer.
At first, we made bread with the bread maker gifted to us by my husband's grandparents (this was a hand-me-down though - not something we asked them to buy for us). The loaves turned out pretty good, but we weren't overly impressed. At least, not impressed enough to stop buying bread from the store outside of the loaves we made at home. But, it was in January 2019 when Kristine suggested that we try to make boule - a more advanced loaf in the Bread Baking for Beginners book - after having never made bread by hand in our lives.
As you can see, the loaves didn't turn out that bad for it being our first time. I had tried, the day before, to make a no-knead bread loaf, but it was very dense. When it's colder outside, it takes the dough so much longer to do what it needs to do (mostly, rise). Things I didn't fully understand at this stage of bread making. And while our boule was delicious the day of, by the next day, it was gummy and borderline too hard to eat. My husband and I didn't even finish our loaf.
Fast forward to almost an entire year later. I haven't baked that much bread this year, but the last two or three months, I've been making a more concentrated effort to bake at least once a week. I've made boule a few more times, and experimented with bagels, pretzels, and babka, but I think sourdough will become my niche. Not only does it taste so much better and keep for much longer, but I feel like it is a true form of art when everything turns out exactly as it should. It teaches me patience, and, surprisingly, how to multitask better. Because what am I going to do for four hours while the dough rises on the first proof? I can't hover over it and watch it the whole time!
The loaf I made this weekend took a total of 28.5 hours from start to finish.
I got a lot of messages on Instagram saying that they could never put that much time into food. "You're just going to eat it!" But I think that's always been part of my problem, and maybe a societal problem as a whole these days: we want things NOW. Fast food. Credit cards to purchase things we won't save for. Fast fashion. Single-use plastic. Now. Now. Now.
If I can create something as beautiful as a sourdough loaf with my own hands, three - three - ingredients, and a lot of time, what can't I do? Why can't I learn to save money better? Hold off from purchasing some silly thing I want in the moment? Why not take up more time-consuming hobbies like macrame? Hold that yoga pose for 30 seconds longer?
I don't consider myself a bread-making expert by any means. I am still very much a beginner. I'm not nearly comfortable enough with bread to stray from a recipe or dream up other ideas for loaves. I'm still trying to figure out how dough should feel and look and react when it's kneaded perfectly. I'd like to think that my sourdough win this weekend wasn't a fluke, but the result of a lot of research and hard work. And, as 2019 turns into 2020, I'm excited to continue this adventure in bread making. I'm excited to see where it leads, and how things look on the other side of it.
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Books I highly recommend if wanting to get into bread making:
