James Morton - Super Sourdough: The Foolproof Guide to Making World-Class Bread at Home

Publishing Director Sarah Lavelle

Design & Art Direction Will Webb

Photographer Andy Sewell

Copy Editor Eve Marleau

Production Director Vincent Smith

Production Controller Sinead Hering

Published in 2019 by Quadrille,

an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing

Quadrille

5254 Southwark Street

London SE1 1UN

quadrille.com

Compilation, design, layout and text

2019 Quadrille

Photography 2019 Andy Sewell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 9 781 78713 466 9

CONTENTS

I THOUGHT ABOUT MAKING YOU A PROMISE. I never decided exactly how it would go, but knew it would be similar to the mission statement of my first book. Something along the lines of, This will give you the tools to produce loaves without failure or fear of disaster. I do not doubt my own sincerity back then, but now, writing such a statement makes me a little uneasy. To include it would be reassuringly confident, but dishonest. In truth, Im not always happy with the loaves I bake and I ruminate over how I can improve every single one. I still have semi-regular dough catastrophes, and through the work Ive put into this book, more bread has ended up burnt or in the dogs bowl than Id be comfortable admitting.

In contrast, I dont want to jump on the idiotic bandwagon of suggesting that sourdough is really difficult and you need to take it really, really seriously, and youre definitely going to fail if you dont follow every single step exactly. Thats not right either. I dont take baking seriously. Im no more talented than anybody else. Ive just been shown a way once that clicked for me, and then I appeared on telly and found I was expected to teach people who certainly knew more than me. Then, I learned from them.

Im still an amateur. If I have a skill, its in talking to you as an equal, hopefully with enthusiasm and (very) occasional wit. This particular piece of work has been a joy, and is my way of paying back the people who have inspired me. This is how I have chosen to pass on our collective understanding.

So, instead of a promise, I will begin this book with a request: treat your loaves with respect. Sourdough, and the making of it, tends to attract personalities with a level of perfectionism, and each loaf baked is an attempt to improve on the last, with inevitable (if occasional) disappointment and eventual disenfranchisement.

Youll see beautiful loaves through these pages with magnificent aeration, scored with intricate patterns made by the bursting of the crusts as the loaf rises in the oven. Its okay if yours doesnt look like the ones shown here. Mine dont, mostly. These only look like this in a particular light from a particular angle, and you havent seen the ones that didnt quite make it. And besides, a picture tells way less than half of the story: your first ever loaf might taste better than any of the ones weve made for this book.

Most important is that each loaf is yours. Each loaf is truly unique. Your yeast, or the magical blend of yeasts and bacteria and other things that we call your sourdough starter, has never been used by anyone else in the history of the world. It is yours. The flavours it creates are yours, and the breads it rises are yours. Pay your loaf, and yourself, the respect they deserve.

And if youre already past that, and youre an addicted, pedantic purist looking to drive out the imperfections in your perfect loaves? Well... well done. Lets do that, then. Just be sure not to skip anything.

GLHF.

(Good Luck; Have Fun.)

James

WHAT IS SOURDOUGH?

Flour, water and salt. Mixed, left and baked.

At its most basic, this is sourdough.

Sourdough, or sourdough bread (pain au levain), is what civilised Western man ate before the advent of commercial bakers yeast. Instead, the various wild yeasts and bacteria that rise the bread are cultured spontaneously. The vast majority of these come from the flour itself, where they sit in a dormant state.

The word sourdough can refer to the baked loaves of bread, but also to the sourdough starter (levain) this is a dough of varying wetness that is kept by the baker as a continual fountain of yeast. This makes starting a new fermentation a simple and predictable process. Some call this a mother dough. And some people name theirs Boris and ask friends to look after it when they go on holiday.

These loaves, compared with ones made using a commercial yeast, usually take longer. Far longer. This has led to a wariness that hangs over even experienced bread makers sourdough is seen as complicated, involved and with a high risk of failure. For some, this is a turn-off; for others, an allure.

Sourdoughs can usually be identified by the tang that gives them their name, but before then, by their anatomy. Note the smooth and shiny, golden crust speckled with tiny bubbles and with a magnificent tear where it has been scored. As you slice through them, youll witness the crumb. This is the word for the pattern of the holes through the middle of your bread. Naturally leavened breads often have large, irregular holes that bounce back when pressed.

The word sourdough isnt a protected term. Like craft beer, gin and yoga, it has become an expression of one-upmanship among the hipster elite and something of a middle-class, sabbatical endeavour. Its trendy. It has therefore been jumped on by multinationals; a buzzword for selling upmarket lines at a vastly inflated price. Dont assume sourdough means quality.

A Manifesto

The subject is filled with jargon. Im sorry. Im bad for it, but I hope not as bad as some. It seems that the primary aim of sourdough recipe books is to further insulate an already nerdy community. In this one, if youre not getting things and it all seems a bit off-putting and complex, dont worry. Im going to go through things from the most basic steps and build bit by bit. Everything will be repeated again and again and again, so that soon, the words that were unfamiliar wont be.

By building this understanding, my hope is that this guide can take someone whos either never made bread or only dabbled, and bestow an ability to make unbelievably good bread almost straight away. When you show people how to make bread in person, it works. Ive been really quite annoyed when their first loaf is better than mine have been for weeks. Lets hope it translates to the page.

If youre already an experienced baker then, rest assured, this is not solely a beginners guide. You might find my point of view useful, or you might not. If you find your way works better, great. But I hope youll click with something. Heres to ironing out all the flaws that were bugging you, or that you didnt even know were there. Hopefully, well take your bread to the level you want it to be.

There may be many guides out there promising similar things, and indeed my methods are mere suggestions. There may be better ways of doing things, but I just dont know them yet. I hope you will come to trust me.