S p r a t t i c u s: February 2012

Here's a little visual journey through my latest sourdough baking odyssey. I was using Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's sourdough recipe. [I won't re-type it, just follow the link.] I guess I went with about 60:40 white:wholemeal flour.

The trick to this recipe is that you make a sponge the night before. A sponge is basically half your flour and all your water from the recipe mixed together and left over night. It's a way of getting the natural yeast really fizzing and active - effectively you are turning half the flour into a large sourdough starter!

Half the flour, all the water and five spoonfuls of
sourdough starter to make the 'sponge'

Leave overnight to get 'fizzy'

Add the rest of the flour and the salt, kead, prove, knock-back, shape
(repeat prove, knock-back and shape up to three times for more texture and flavour)

Finally, the dough was shaped and left to rise (one in a floured tin, one free-form;
can you guess which was which), gently tipped out and baked.

Et voila - a sourdough loaf (or two). One is showing signs of a frenzied 'just out of oven' attack on one end!

We don't have any pets at Spratticus Towers. Generally we're too busy heading off hither and thither to support anything other than maybe a python or crocodile that could survive for weeks on a solo meal of... say a small cat for example (other reptilian snacks are available). But let's face it, they're not too cuddly.

BUT...I do have a working pet of sorts - Yoric. He's my sourdough starter. For the uninitiated, sourdough is a bread, it tastes a little sour (yes, really!), it's a bit more dense and chewy, has more irregular air bubbles - some big, some small - and has a far more complex flavour than your standard loaf. Time for a visual:

Sourdough loaf - recognise it?

Sourdough leaven
The reason for that is that it is made using a natural yeast culture or leaven (a different strain of yeast from standard baker's yeast). It is probably the oldest technique in getting bread to rise (leavened bread...ring a bell?) and preceded other forms of yeast that have come to baking from the brewing process (e.g. barm). You add the sourdough leaven instead of powdered or flaked yeast. During the proofing process, when the yeast is getting on down with the starches in the flour, the sourdough yeast releases natural acids (like lactic acid) which lend the bread that sour yet toothsome flavour.

A simplified chemistry lesson (but it's quite interesting, honest)

Sourdough leaven has maintained a stronghold in the breads and baking traditions of northern Europe. The reason for this is a little complex and reads like a practical chemistry thesis - but in short it's to do with the fact that a sourdough leaven deals better with the gluten poor flours that predominate in the harsher environments of northern Europe, predominantly rye flour. Where other types of yeast can't deal with the starches in rye flour and give up, sourdough leaven has a wild party, body popping and bubbling like it's dancing to Deee-Lite - 'Groove is in The Heart'. [Right, that's enough of that.]

Party at the Yeast House!

That's not to say that sourdough can only be made from rye flour, far from it. It might dance a polka with low gluten flour like rye, but by golly, it can jitterbug with most any flour. All bread flour will make a natty sourdough loaf and the type of flour will produce a different flavour and texture of bread.

Unlike powdered yeast, a sourdough starter culture needs to be looked after, just like any living organism - fed, watered, given the right environment to thrive and sometimes disciplined a little if it's not behaving itself, so in that respect it is a kind of pet.

The birth of Yoric
Yoric came to me in Dec 2010. I mixed some white bread flour and water together in a plastic tub, gave it a vigorous whisking et voila, five days later we had a pet - Yoric. He's formed of natural yeasts that exist everywhere in the air. Give them an inviting home and they'll settle in. Treat them right and they will be with you for life, longer even. Some sourdough starters (or leaven) have been knocking around for 150 years or more, past on from one generation of baker to the next.

My pet Yoric - a sourdough starter. OK, he doesn't look much, but he's all I've got!

A little sourdough history
Sourdough bread has its roots in northern Europe but starters also travelled with European immigrants to the US and Canada, journeyed with them into the Yukon and Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush and across to the west coast during the Californian Gold Rush.They were carefully guarded and an original 1849 strain still exists in San Francisco and is used to make the now famous San Francisco sourdough.

Sam 'Sourdough' MacDonald - retired pirate and famous
Klondike baker, seen here just rinsing some limes with a
fresh baked sourdough loaf to hand/hook. A real man.

There are some variants on creating your own sourdough starter - adding organic grape skins to the flour water mix or fresh bay leaves, basically introducing the yeast that exists on the fruit or leaf to the flour. I found that unnecessary.

Feeding and looking after Yoric
At room temperature Yoric needs feeding pretty much every day. This means pouring some of Yoric away (or using him to make a loaf) and beating in fresh white bread flour and more water - about equal quantities of each by volume. The pouring away element is simply so you don't end up with an increasing amount of hungry starter - just maintain about 300ml or so.

Yoric feeds on the starches in the flour and shows he's content by blowing bubbles. I don't bake with Yoric every day so it's handy to slow down his appetite a bit - make him a little sluggish. You can do this two ways - chill him or make him thicker and less runny. Chilling involves the fridge and he can probably go a week without a feed. Thickening Yoric means more flour and less water and has the same effect. Make him more of a dough than a batter AND pop him in the fridge and he could go for two or three weeks without a feed. Handy when heading off to Greece for the annual island hopping trip...or if you're just a little forgetful.

The Moods of Yoric
I know, it sounds like a prog rock album...but Yoric has different moods, colours, textures and aromas and it pays to identify these and know how to treat him accordingly.

After a feed and at room temperature Yoric becomes a little lively, blows bubbles and gets a bit frothy. He smells sour but definitely yeasty, also a bit creamy, maybe a hint of bananas too. That's good (I think) and he's ready to be used in baking.

Yoric blowing bubbles

After a few days in the fridge without a feed Yoric is sluggish seemingly inactive, he will have developed a liquid 'hat' and smell pretty sour, slightly boozy. Something like this:

Sleepy Yoric. Actually it's not Yoric but let's skip over that for now.

The liquid is the by-product of fermentation called hooch - uh huh that's right - booze (and other strange fluids). You'd have to be brave, desperate or stupid (or all three) to drink it though. Naturally I have and it's rank. I tend to pour this away before the next feed but it's not technically necessary, you can stir it in for a more powerful sour flavour (and the booze element evaporates during baking anyway...I think). Pour away half of Yoric, add in equal quantities of flour and water (by volume) and stir vigorously to bring Yoric back to frothy life - like Lazarus of Bethany he will rise from his tomb (but don't get any funny ideas that you are the Second Coming or Uri Geller or anything).

Stringy, coagulated and lumpy, generally looking like something you might fish out of the bottom of a pond (but off-white in colour) - I think this is a bad sign. It happened once and I thought Yoric was a gonner. Three days of intensive care, regular feeding and sitting up all night with him (as if) and he recovered his smooth look & texture and lively verve. Phew. He walks with a slight limp now, but otherwise he's fine.
Green or pink colour or stubbornly inactive after two feeds - very bad news. Hold a brief but moving memorial service, then throw away and start again. Burial at sea is fitting but not always practical.

Whatever state Yoric is in, he needs to be buzzing, frothing and fizzing before being used for baking. If he's been dormant and doughy in the fridge, then he needs to be warmed up, wet-up, fed and given a thorough beating to aerate (I know you should use positive feed back on pets rather than out-and-out brutality...but he loves it, honestly). It might take a couple of days with regular feeds to get Yoric bake-ready. If he's already been out at room temperature, is batter consistency and frothing, then he's good to go - just let him off the leash!

Offspring of Yoric

There have been progeny of Yoric. It's a lot easier for a sourdough starter to breed than say a horse and there's no need to visit a sourdough stud. You just pour half the starter into a clean vessel and hand it over to its new parents. Swaddling clothes are optional but I would recommend wetting the newborn's head with a few drinks down the pub and smoking a large cigar - it's a BIG day!

The first was to my friend Dan and he was christened Horatio - as in 'Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.' Yes, yes, pretentious but clever I thought. Sadly Dan's sourdough husbandry skills were not up to his deftness at making a literary connection and Horatio tragically died. RIP.

The other is with Matt, a fellow and sometimes rival Brighton amateur baker, and is called Yoric-son (see what he did there?). I am happy to say under Matt's studious care Yoric-son is still frothing strong and baking up fine bready products.

Sourdough recipe
This post wasn't about a sourdough bread recipe, I just wanted to introduce you to Yoric and share my little sourdough story. But if you find yourself literally clawing at your screen and whining 'Show me a recipe' as tears plough salty furrows down your cheeks and bubbles of snot balloon from your nose (nice imagery), then you could start with River Cottage Sourdough Recipe. This is what I started on. Dan Lepard's recipe is pretty straight forward too.

Let's GO! (and bake)