Tap tap. Is this thing on?
Well it’s been several years since I’ve blogged. Life can really get in the way. Worrying about what other people think of you can really get in the way. We’re going to practice being done with that now.
I am in coronavirus quarantine in Oakland CA. The state government has asked that we “shelter-in-place” and as an avid rule-follower, I’m working from home. Eating at home. Exercising at home. As an introvert, this seemed like a pretty easy feat at the beginning. Well I was wrong, and that’s OK and also not the point of me coming back here.
As I know a lot of people are, I’ve been looking for something to do when I’m not working. And since I’m really bad at it, something to help provide some structure to my day so I’m not sending emails at 10pm. Also something that isn’t a screen, and doesn’t necessarily distract me from thinking and feeling and being still in some way. I don’t want to distract from all the sludge this experience is bringing up (read: fuck capitalism).
I first started with fermentables because an industry friend that makes cannabis infused probiotic chocolates gifted me with a set of mason jars, a masher, some glass weights, and easy ferment lids. Turns out, fermenting is WAY easier than I initially thought. It’s also something that my partner has a lot of experience in and is eager to participate in, and so fermenting produce doesn’t take up enough of my time, nor provide enough of that active meditation I’m looking for.
But I have been super excited by watching the CO2 bubbles rise from my jar – it’s truly chemical change in action and so I wanted to keep with the theme of fermenting. I read a bunch of Sandor Ellix Katz’ The Art of Fermentation and was drawn to a lot of things. Homemade soy sauce. Kombucha. Natto. Kvass. However none of these really provided me with something super tactile and furthermore, none truly required daily maintenance. Except for the soy sauce and damn that’s a little high maintenance for me right now. Maybe closer to the summer when the temperatures will be less finicky.
In an internet hole, I ended up watching a video of someone kneading clay for like an hour, which led me to bread kneading, which lead me to: sourdough. Except DON’T knead your sour dough. Maybe it was this clay video. Maybe it was a friend recommending a book titled Sourdough (which I have still yet to read) or maybe it’s just my brain’s dopamine hit when I think about that slightly tangy squish of a good sourdough loaf. My mouth actually salivates at “slightly tangy squish”. TMI?
So I made a starter, which seems really simple. You basically mix equal parts filtered water and unbleached flour and leave it out in a warm area covered with a towel. You pour off most of it each day and add fresh 1:1 ratio of flour to water to feed it. And there’s your starter. This has been perfect, something to feed daily and since I started it in the evening, I had a good ending point for my work day. It’s 6pm, it’s time to stop the computer and feed the starter. But then I got greedy and attempted some loaves super quickly. Thank you dopamine hits.
I followed a recipe I found on the internet that had good ratings. All was well until we had a virtual happy hour with friends and my Old Fashioned was too strong. Powered by whiskey confidence, I quickly read the directions, just went for it, and basically over-handled my dough, deflating it into a gloopy puddle. I still baked the loaves the next morning, albeit angrily while throwing tools around the kitchen. The resulting loaves were the most deliciously sour gluten-bricks I’ve ever had the privilege to spread fifteen dollar french butter on. With quickly full bellies and some fear in our hearts, we imbibed some Metamucil capsules chased with lots of water. I fed my starter and vowed to try again the next day. But then my starter seemed to be in trouble.
And now, even with that failure, sourdough is kind of all I can think about. On Tuesday I had to put a moratorium on it for a few days so I could actually focus on work and not googling and scribbling notes about what could have gone wrong anytime a thought popped into my head. I continued to feed my starter, still unsure about whether it was even active.
In all of the troubleshooting I’ve done, I’ve noticed that most of the sites that talk about sourdough and starters, often address only one aspect of this process. Either a recipe, a method, or a solution, frequently without a “why” behind each. That’s not how I roll (heh heh get it?). I need to know the why before I can be convinced to do something. Also my kitchen isn’t a vacuum, and neither is theirs. So when you give me directions to add flour and water in two different stages, you need to tell me WHY. First to form the gluten. Water allows the two proteins found in flour – glutenin and gliadin – to bind and form gluten. Second to feed the yeast and give it more activity for rising. That second part? If I had known that I would have realized that temperature was also kind of important and that the cool air from my open doors was probably NOT helpful.
Today, I reached out to a homie I used to work with who I now refer to as a “professional fermenter”. He has a lot of experience with naturally leavened breads. He immediately gave me several tips to trouble-shoot and followed each one up with why it was important. A regular Alton Brown if you will (which reminds me AB must have done something on sourdough yes?). I am reinvigorated and several dollars poorer having now purchased multiple specialty flours. Yikes.
It turns out, I wasn’t feeding my starter properly and as such it became too acidic. Hence the deliciously sour loaf with a total lack of open crumb. Therefore when I over-handled it a bit, it could NOT keep it’s shape and deflated to that gloopy mess. Now if I were like a lot of people I would leave you with that and you would think sourdough making is like witchcraft, and you’d be pretending “yes I know what crumb is”. BUT I won’t because IT’S ACTUALLY SCIENCE. I also suspect that the explainer people, people like my homie, aren’t about sitting down at a computer to document this all for other people in a blog form. But that’s also likely my prejudice.
Things I did wrong:
- I mixed equal parts of filtered water and unbleached AP flour and then added it to all of the starter I had accumulated to feed it. I should have added 1-2 tbsp of the starter to the new flour/water paste to feed. This way there is more fresh yeast and less acid. Why is there even acid you ask? Well because when the yeasts feed and don’t have more feed and as a result die off, they create lactic acid. Too much lactic acid means the yeast can’t survive, which means there’s nothing to feed, which means there are no bubbles. I’m in this for the bubbles.
- I handled the dough too much. I should have been very hands-off with the dough once the second stage of stretching was finished. Why? I worked all of the air out of the dough simply by handling a little too much. The recipe I used simply said to “shape” the dough and then divide it in two and “shape” again. Next time I will simply divide the dough and shape once. Truly no need for double shaping otherwise I’m double-handling. By the time I had finished shaping the main dough, I noticed it had already lost volume. Now this is ALSO an indicator of not having a strong enough starter, but it did have some volume that was lost to the over-handling. 😦
I’ve decided to document this process here in parts, as I take on different loaves and starters. It’s teaching me a lot about how I meet my own demand for perfectionism and how I react when I inevitably fail at that attempt. Perfect is not possible. It’s interesting to witness that struggle.
It’s important to document so when something goes wrong, or even better for when something goes right, I have information to refer to to repeat that process and as such outcome.
And ultimately, this sourdough, and most fermentation, is a conduit for me to the natural world. This feels super important right now when I’m limited with my access to nature. These tiny bubbles that form, these are a small piece of natural processes that feel like magic because they’re mostly invisible to the human eye. But when I get to eat a slice, even a dense slice, I get to participate in that magic. I get to nourish myself with nature-in-action.
Secretly, I think it’s also a catalyst to feeling my feelings. When that loaf broke and I had to look at it the next morning, I was full of anger. Angry at our federal government for choosing capitalism over human lives and that we even set our system up where that can actually make sense to people. Angry that people I’ve never looked in the eye were out there threatening my loved ones. Angry that millions of people’s day-to-day lives are disrupted in irreparable ways, ways that we will witness the repercussions of for generations to come. And that damn dense loaf gave me an excuse to be angry and cry and slam things around. Then it gave me a little bit of hope, in it’s delicious sour-ness. And I think we could all use little bits of hope here and there.
Love,
Julianne
itinerant gastronomer 