How to Bake the Best Bread in the World
This article tells how to make the best bread in the world. If you don't believe me, try it! No matter how much of this bread I've eaten, I've never grown tired of it.
What's amazing is that it's made from wheat, water, and salt. That's all!
I first learned to love this bread while visiting the
Community of the
The Starter
It's funny to hear people talk about buying sourdough starter. Buying starter is a lot like buying air. Because that's where the sourdough "yeast" comes from.
Forget fancy starter recipes-especially the ones telling you to add baker's yeast! Just put a little whole wheat flour in a small dish and mix in some water till it's like pancake batter. Then set it out uncovered, in a warm place, but out of direct sunlight. (Exact amounts really don't matter, but if you need a guideline, try half a cup of flour with an equal amount of water. After evaporation, that should yield about half a cup of starter.)
The starter mixture will pick up wild "yeast" from the air-actually, a variety of microorganisms-and feed them. Within a few days, the mixture should bubble and smell sour.
At that point, put your starter in a loosely covered jar or crock (no metal), and refrigerate it. Don't worry about "feeding the starter" to keep it fresh. Left alone, it will stay good for at least two months. When you're ready to use it, just pour off any black liquid that has formed on top.
Aren't there better starters you can buy or borrow? Probably not-because any starter sooner or later takes on the strongest organisms in your own environment. So you wind up with the same starter, either way!
The Ingredients
Why bother making just one loaf? This recipe makes four 2-lb. loaves. If that's too much for you, give the extras to friends. But watch out: They'll beg for more!
You need 6 lbs.-about 16 cups-of whole wheat flour. Please use flour only from hard winter wheat. Soft winter wheat is for pastry, not bread. Hard spring wheat is the favorite of commercial bakers, because it rises higher and faster-but it has much less flavor. Besides, slow rising allows you more leeway in timing.
Of course, if you can mill your own wheat, so much the better. Two-thirds to three-quarters cup of wheat berries gives you one cup of flour. I buy wheat berries in 50-lb. sacks, then run them through an electric mill.
The only other ingredients are water and salt!
The Sponge
The basic method of breadmaking I use is called "the sponge method." In this method, you first use half the flour to make a liquidy "sponge." Later, you add more flour to make the dough.
To make the sponge, put 8 cups of flour in a large bowl and add all your starter. Then mix in warm water and beat the mixture till it's like pancake batter. You want it to end up lukewarm. Too cold will keep the "yeast" from multiplying. Too hot will kill them.
Now cover the bowl with a towel and leave it for a few hours, or overnight.
If you don't want to use warm water, you can instead put the covered bowl where it will get warm-in an oven with a pilot light, or in direct sunlight, or in front of a heating vent.
You can tell your sponge is ready when it's slightly domed, smells sour, and is stringy when you stir it. If you leave the sponge too long, the "yeast" will eat the gluten strands, and the sponge will be runny. Your bread will wind up more sour, but it will also be heavier.
The Two Things You Must Always Remember
Before you make your sponge into dough, ALWAYS remember these two things, in this order:
Take out a small amount of starter for your next batch. (I take about half a cup, but it could be more or less.)
Add salt to the sponge-2 tablespoons for this recipe.
I won't tell you how many times I've forgotten one or the other!
The Dough
To make the dough, stir most of the remaining flour into the sponge, a cup or so at a time. Stop when you can stick your fingers a little ways into the dough and pull them back clean. This is just enough flour so the dough won't stick to the breadboard. The less flour you add, the lighter your bread.
By the way, this is where you can vary the recipe. The sponge should be entirely wheat, because that's where the gluten comes from-but for the dough, you can add anything you want. For instance, make rye bread by adding rye flour instead of wheat, plus caraway seeds.
Anything other than wheat, though, will make your bread heavier-and a bit less simple.
Here's the part you already know, if you've ever made bread: Empty the dough onto a floured breadboard and knead it until it's springy. Then form it into four loaves, and place them in oiled or greased bread pans.
The Rising
Why not keep things simple? One rising is really enough.
For the rising, cover the pans with a towel and place them in a warm place-an oven with a pilot light, or in direct sunlight, or in front of a heating vent. The rising takes three to four hours, and there's lots of leeway.
Here's a quicker, more certain method: Turn your oven on low when you start making the dough. When your loaves are in the pans, turn the oven off, put the pans inside, and cover them. With this method, rising takes under two hours. REMEMBER TO TURN OFF THE OVEN!
With hard winter wheat, the dough will rise only to about half again its original height. To keep the tops from collapsing flat during baking, catch the loaves before they reach their maximum height. How do you tell? Listen to the crackling of the bread as it rises. When the crackling lessens, the loaves are ready.
But don't worry. You could let the loaves rise for a day or more, and they'd still turn out well enough.
The Baking
Start your baking from a cold oven, to give a final spurt to the rising. Set the oven at 375 degrees and bake the bread about 55 minutes. If you take it out and find it's not done, just stick it back in for more baking.
Try to resist cutting into the bread until half an hour after it leaves the oven. It's still cooking!
You may not need to wrap this bread at all, but at least wait until it's room temperature. Trapping too much moisture will soften the crust. Also, don't refrigerate this bread, because that dries it out quickly.
This bread takes a long time to go bad. I've travelled with loaves in a suitcase that were still good after three weeks!
Amazing Facts
Here are a few items that may interest you. Most are from "A Return to Real Bread," by Ronald E. Kotzsch, in the July 1984 issue of East West Journal.
Sourdough was the only risen bread until the mid-1800s. Baker's yeast was developed at that time-not to improve the quality of bread, but to streamline commercial baking.
Some researchers say sourdough is healthier than bread made with baker's yeast, because the sourdough organisms break down elements in the wheat that are harmful or that lock up nutrients.
Sourdough is easier to digest because-like yogurt-it's partially "pre-digested." Even people normally allergic to wheat can sometimes eat this bread. (To make it even easier to digest, you can toast it.)
Whole-grain sourdough of this kind has been baked again
commercially in the
Sourdough Starter, the REAL one!
© by Tony van Roon
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Makes about 125 gram
Day 1:
Mix 8 heaping tablespoons 100% whole wheat flour with enough warm (distilled) water to make a thick, porridge like mixture. Cover this mixture with a moist towel and let it rise on a draft-free warm location for 24 hours. You can double this recipe for your convenience and keep half of it in the refrigerator.
Day 2:
Stir the mixture 3 times a day.
Day 3:
Stir the mixture again 3 times a day.
Day 4:
Add 3 heaping tablespoons of 100% whole wheat flour and a bit of warm distilled water. Stir this mixture again 3 times daily.
Day 5:
Same as Day 4!
Day 6:
The dough is ready when you see little bubbles coming from the mixture.
I use distilled water (purchased from the drugstore), for sourdough, because my area of living contains very hard water and contaminents like chlorine and others added by the city.
Don't be fooled by the sour smell (like barf) of this mixture, this is what the dough needs to rise and provides the sour taste to the bread, which taste really good. Use this starter as your see fit or with the Original Sourdough Bread Recipe.
This particular starter originates from The Netherlands and was used by my family for generations, so a very long time (pre 1900), before the ready-to-use dry yeast now found in every supermarket. Through the very long rise time (5 to 6 hours) most of the nutrients will be partly broken down which means that it will be better absorbed by the body. Also, this old Dutch bread will be good for at least 2 weeks! Making this bread yourself is very easy and a blessing for the digestive system. It will asure you of a soft stool. This bread has a specific, light sour taste and the original Dutch name for the bread with this sourdough was called "Zuurdesem Brood".
Sourdough Bread (Zuurdesem Brood)
© by Tony van Roon
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makes 1 bread:
500 gram 100% whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons salt (optional)
125grams Sourdough starter (see sourdough starter recipe)
about ¼ liter warm water
You want sourdough bread??? Try this old
Dutch one. It has been in my family for several generations. This bread is a
real sourbread and has the associated, peculiar,
light sour taste. Make no mistake, this bread is probably very much different
than what you are used to. Also, slice this bread thinly because it is heavy.
Because of very long rise time most of the nutrients will be broken down
already which means better absorption by the body. You don't ever need laxatives
if you eat this bread on a regular basis. In the
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Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl, with the 125gram of sourdough starter, and knead it for about 10 minutes. If it is sticky add a little bit of flour and a bit of warm water if too dry.
Cover the dough (in the bowl) with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and let rise on a warm, draft free place for 1½ hours.
Knead again for about 2 minutes.
Form the dough with a lightly floured rollerpin to a rectangular shape, about an inch thick. Roll it up and place it in a well greased, breadpan with the seam down. Cut the top, with a scissor or sharp knife, lengthwise so it will not crack during rising or baking.
Cover the dough lightly with plastic wrap (brush the top lightly with oil to prevent drying out) and let it rise for 4 hours. A temperature of 25 °C is desirable. I usually heat up the oven lightly to this temperature and let the dough rise in there, while once in while reheating the oven slightly to maintain the 25 degree temperature.
Bake in a preheated oven at 210 °Celcius (412 °F.) for about 45 minutes. Place it low in the oven! 10 minutes before the end of baking brush the top with water to get a shiny crust.
If you like this bread (try one first) you can speed up the dough making process by doubling the amounts for the starter dough and keep 125 gram in a loosely covered jar in the refrigerator. Then, the evening before baking the bread, take the starter dough from the refrigerator, add some flour and warm water as per above instructions and off you go.
Basic Sourdough Starter
by Tony van Roon
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Makes about 1½ cups
1 cup lukewarm purified water (90- to 105°F)
1/3 cup instant nonfat dry milk
3 Tbs lowfat plain yogurt
1 cup all-purpose flour
Rinse 1½ to 2-quart glass or ceramic bowl with hot water several minutes and wipe dry. Combine water and dry milk in bowl, stirring until milk is dissolved. Blend in yogurt. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand in warm draft-free area until consistency of yogurt, about 12 to 24 hours.
Using plastic spoon, gradually add flour, blending until smooth. Cover and let stand in warm draft-free area until mixture is full of bubbles and has sour aroma, about 2 to 4 days. The starter is now ready to use. Store covered in refrigerator in plastic or ceramic container (do not use glass).
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Doctor's Sourdough Bread
by Tony van Roon
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Makes 4 1-lb Loaves
Servings: 18
1 c Sourdough Starter 2 c Warm Water
2 c Warm Milk 1 T Butter
1 pk Active Dry Yeast 1/4 c Honey
7 c Unbleached Flour 1/4 c Wheat Germ
2 T Sugar 2 t Salt
2 t Baking Soda
Mix the starter and 2 1/2 Cups of the flour and all the water the night before you want to bake. Let stand in warm place overnight.
Next morning mix in the butter with warm milk and stir in yeast until until dissolved. Add honey and when thoroughly mixed, add 2 more cups of flour, and stir in the wheat germ.
Sprinkle sugar, salt, and baking soda over the mixture. Gentlypress into dough and mix lightly. Allow to stand from 30 to 50 minutes until mixture is bubbly. Add enough flour until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl. Then place the dough on a lightly floured board and kead 100 times or until silky mixture is developed. Form into 4 1-lb loaves, place in well-greased loaf pans 9 x 3 size. Let rise until double, about 2 to 3 hours in a warm room. Then bake in hot oven, 400°F, for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325°F. and bake 20 minutes longer or until thoroughly baked.
Remove from pans and place loaves on rack to cool. Butter tops of loaves to prevent hard crustyness.
Quick Sourdough French Bread
by Tony van Roon
I love sourdough breads and there are plenty of recipes for sourdough by machine (check your bookstore), but I don't have the patience nor the time to babysit a culture (or bean sprouts either). This bread is great- you get the sour taste and a very crusty bread without the fuss. Oh sure, you don't get the complexity of flavor as with a culture, but that's life. King Arthur also sells "sour salt" (citric acid) which is supposed to give a sour taste to breads as well. I haven't tried it yet.
QUICK SOURDOUGH FRENCH BREAD
(Source: back of a Pillsbury bread flour bag)
Bread machine instructions
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4 to 5 c. flour
1 c. warm water (120-130 deg)
2 T. wheat germ
1 c. dairy sour cream, room temp.
1 T. sugar
2 T. vinegar
2 t. salt
1/2 t. ginger
2 pkgs. yeast
Cut this recipe in half for the bread machine! Place ingredients your machine in order recommended by manufacturer.
__________ ______ ____ __________ ______ ____ __________ ______ ____ ____________ Conventional instructions:
Additional ingredients---
1 egg white
1 T. water
2 t. poppy or sesame seeds
In a large bowl, combine 1-1/2 c. flour, and next 4 ingredients; blend well. Add water, sour cream and vinegar to flour mixture Blend at low speed until moistened; beat 3 minutes at medium speed. Stir in additional 2 to 2-1/2 cups flour until dough pulls cleanly away from sides of bowl.
On floured surface, knead in remaining 1/2 to 1 cup flour until dough is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place dough in greased bowl; cover loosely with plastic wrap. Divide dough in half, and form into 2 oblong loaves. Place on greased cookie sheet. With a sharp knife, make 5 (1/4" deep) diagonal slashes on top of each loaf. Cover, let rise in warm place until light and doubled in size, about 15 minutes.
Heat oven to 375 °F. Bake 25 minutes. In a small bowl, eat egg white and water. Remove bread from oven, and brush with egg white mixture. Sprinkle with seeds. Bake an additional 5-10 minutes. Immediately remove from cookie sheet.
by Tony van Roon
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Makes 2 loaves:
Sponge:
o 1 2/3 cups unbleached bread flour
o 1 1/3 cups warm water
o 1/2 cup starter
o mix until mixture has batter consistency
o let stand until bubbly
Dough:
Add the ingredients below to the Sponge:
o 3 cups unbleached white flour
o 1 2/3 teaspoon salt
o mix until dough has a dough-like consistency
o knead for 10 minutes or so
o let rise until doubled
o punch down
o devide dough in half
o shape into loaves
o let rest again until almost doubled in size
Bread:
o Bake for 50 minutes in a pre-heated, 400°F. oven.
Note: To keep a starter from dying, all you have to do is feed it *at-least* once a week with some warm water and flour. A glass jar or container is a must since metal will corrode.
Sourdough Banana Bread
by Tony van Roon
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""
12 Servings.
1/2 c Shortening 1 c Sugar
1 ea Large Egg 1 c Mashed Bananas
1 c Active Sourdough Starter 2 c Unbleached Flour
1 t Salt 1 t Baking Powder
1/2 t Baking Soda 3/4 c Chopped Walnuts
1 t Vanilla OR 1 t Grated
Cream together the shortening and sugar, add egg and mix until blended. Stir in bananas and sourdough starter. Add orange peel or vanilla. Stir flour and measure again with salt, baking powder and soda. Add flour mixture and walnuts to the first mixture, stirring until just blended. Pour into greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Bake in 350 degree oven for 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool to cold before slicing.
Sourdough Starter - Recipe More Healthy Food Solutions
Excerpted from 500 Treasured Country Recipes, by Martha Storey
Sourdough starters are available in some health food and specialty stores, but it's easy to make your own.
Simple Solution:
printer friendly version
There are several ways. Dissolve 1 tablespoon dry yeast and 2 tablespoons honey in 2 cups warm water in a glass, plastic, or crockery bowl. Stir in 2 cups unbleached white flour; cover with a towel and let sit in a warm place for several days, or until foamy and soured. Store in a covered jar in the refrigerator.
Warning: Use a bowl big enough to contain what may be a startling degree of expansion.
If you don'tuse our starter for a week, you'll need to feed it. First, remove 1/2 to 1 cup of the original stater. Throw it away, give it away, or use it. Stir in a mixture of 1 cup flour, 1 cup warm liquid (milk or water), and a little sugar (optional). Let sit at room temperature for a few hours; stir and refrigerate.
Bread recipe: sourdough starter
Considerable fortunes have been built out of bread, and it's no wonder. Bread in its various incarnations has been with us since we first learned to grow our food instead of chasing it, and it can be accurately stated that it's the very heart of good cooking. If this is so, a warm, crusty loaf of fresh-baked sourdough is it's soul.
Sourdough baking seems to have acquired an aura of mystical secrecy which it doesn't really deserve. There has to be well over a thousand sets of instructions for making starter, ranging from "mix up some water and flower, let it set a spell until it stinks a littul" to three-page masterpieces written with the sweaty intensity and detail of a physician talking someone through an appendectomy. My take on it is somewhere in the middle. Logic dictates that people should probably not eat unidentifiable compounds which stink a littul, and simultaneously demands an explanation as to how in thunder our pioneer grannies managed to make and keep their starters alive without thermostats, rubber tubing, ph testing kits, refrigeration and stainless steel containers stashed away somewhere in their covered wagons.
Without venturing into the facinating (albeit, superfluous) world of micro-oganism symbiotic relationships, a good starter is one derived from wild yeasts floating around in the air. I don't mean they're toke-happy little party animals with no morals...I mean they don't come out of the little foil lined envelopes on aisle 12B. Free range yeasts, so to speak. They just don't need that much encouragement to grow happily inside an old ceramic or glass jug, waiting for you to scoop some of them out and turn them into one of the most heavenly concoctions on earth.
You'll need the following:
A large crockery or glass container with a loose fitting lid.
A couple of good-sized potatoes, unpeeled.
2 cups non-self rising flour, unbleached if you can get it.
2 tablespoons sugar.
Boil the potatoes in enough water to cover them until the skins split and the water becomes a little cloudy. Remove the potatoes (set them aside for some other use) and cool the potato water to about 110F. Mix about 2 1/2 cups of the potato water, the sugar and the flour in your container, and leave it uncovered for a few hours. Then cover it loosely...a sealed container will explode when the mixture ferments...and let it stand in a warm place for four or five days, stirring it once or twice a day. As it begins to bubble, sprinkle a small amount (about two teaspoons) of flour and a pinch of sugar into it at intervals and stir. Your starter is ready to use for pancakes or biscuits in about five days, although it won't "ripen" enough for bread for about three weeks. Feed the yeast culture once a week with approximately a cup of potato water and a cup of flour, well mixed, discarding an equal amount of starter if you're not going to use any that week. If you use some, replace that amount with the flour/potato water mix.
With a nod in the direction of modern sanitation, you may refrigerate your starter between uses. Even though it will be pretty acidic, occasionally a starter will become host to undesirable bacteria (if it starts to turn orange or green, get rid of it) and have to be discarded. Refrigeration will lessen the chances of that happening. However, if you're planning to bake, you'll need to let the starter stand at room temperature for about eight hours before you make your bread. Barring mishap or mishandling, such as heating it to over a hundred degrees F., your starter will last indefinitely. It's not unusual for starters to be active and healthy for years at a time.
While you're waiting for it to ripen, start rummaging through the available sourdough recipes online or in your favorite bookstore, because you'll probably want to use them all.
Sourdough Starter
Basically, sourdough starter is just flour, water, and yeast. The complications arise from the source of the yeast. The classic method for making sourdough starter is to mix flour and water, in equal measure, and leave the mixture to sit uncovered for a week. If your tap water is chlorinated or fluoridated, use filtered or spring water. At the end of this time, you may have sourdough starter. Or, you may have the beginning of a little mold garden. Or, you may have a culture of weird and nasty bacteria. So many choices! Whatever you get, smell it; if it doesn't smell like food, throw it away!
I've seen one set of instructions for making a sourdough starter that actually included a source of the wild yeast: they suggested that you buy organic fruit and rinse it in water, then filter that through cheesecloth and use that as the water in the starter. I've never tried this method, but it makes sense to me. If you're going to make your own starter, this might be the way to go.
If anyone you know makes sourdough bread, get some of their starter from them. That's obviously easiest.
Finally, you can buy a sourdough starter. That's what I did, and it's wonderful. I got mine from The King Arthur Flour Company. These folks really bake, and their catalogue is bona fide kitchen porn. Okay, maybe you think I'm a wuss for buying my starter instead of making my own by trial and error, but I didn't want to get salmonella. And it's a really, really good starter.
Whatever means you use to begin, keeping a starter is a simple matter of storing it in the fridge and feeding it occasionally. I've let mine go for a month with no problems. When you take starter out to bake with, just add back 1 cup flour and 1 cup water for every 1 1/3 cup of starter you remove, whisk until smooth, and back in the fridge until next time. If it's been a few weeks and you're not planning on baking any time soon, you can remove some starter and discard it (or offer it to friends who bake), then feed as above.
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