Sara Pitzer - Baking with Sourdough

SARA PITZER

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Pitzer, Sara

Baking with sourdough / by Sara Pitzer
A Storey Publishing Bulletin, A-50
ISBN 978-0-88266-225-1

Most of us have known baking only with the recent invention of commercial yeast, but baking with sourdough is being rediscovered. In the days of covered wagons, a pot of sourdough starter for leavening breads, biscuits, and flapjacks was such a common part of cooking that no one would have thought of writing a book of sourdough recipes. During the California Gold Rush and later the Yukon Gold Rush, sourdough was so much a part of their diet that the prospectors were known as sourdoughs. And before pioneers, prospectors, or even colonists, Columbus brought sourdough to American shores aboard his ship.

Perhaps because of all this, some people have considered sourdough uniquely American. But the Egyptians had it several thousand years before the birth of Christ; the ancient Greeks and Romans used it too.

If you have ever kept leftover mashed potatoes or canned fruit so long it began to ferment, you have an idea of how sourdough must have begun and of why it would have attracted attention. The wild yeasts in the air settle into such congenial environments as sugar, starch and liquid combinations and begin to grow, fermenting and producing potent alcohol which rises to the top. For a long time people were more interested in brewing than baking. Even the American prospectors had uses for the alcohol which surfaced in their sourdough starter pots. They called it hooch after the Alaskan Hoochinoo Indians who produced liquor by a sourdough process.

Jokes about hooch permeate American humor, along with stories about the prospector who used sourdough starter to glue broken furniture, the hunter who used it to polish the brass on his gun, and the pioneer mother who rubbed her children with a combination of sourdough and shoe polish so they would rise and shine.

Considering how much people talked about sourdough, it is not surprising that a number of misconceptions about it developed and survive even today.

Perhaps the most common misconception is that sourdough starter should not be frozen. Because the prospectors believed this, they faithfully took their starter pots into their bedrolls with them at night so body heat would keep the starter from freezing. Even Irma Rombauer and Marion R. Becker, authors of the modern classic, Joy of Cooking, warn readers that freezing will kill sourdough starter. The fact is, heat over 95F will kill the yeast, but it can be kept frozen almost indefinitely and is perfectly usable as soon as it has been thawed. Freezing is probably the best way to maintain a seldomused starter.

Another unfortunate misconception about sourdough is that it is finicky and that baking with it requires an almost scientifically controlled environment. Obviously that cant be true or it would not have flourished on wagon trains and at prospecting sites where no one had much control over temperature or time. Its hard to imagine an old sourdough cutting short a successful panning session because it was time to bake the bread.

Another widely held, but mistaken, idea is that anything baked with sourdough tastes so sour it puckers your mouth. Actually, sourdough products can be as bland or as sour as you wish.

On the other hand, one thing you may have heard about sourdough is true: Using it takes time. Fortunately its not your time; because sourdough needs more time to work as a leavener, you must begin the baking process further ahead of when you want to finish than you would with commercial yeast or baking powder. Thats the main way sourdough baking differs from other kinds. You have to give sourdough time to grow, you have to keep it alive, and of course you have to catch the wild yeast to have a starter.

You can get a starter in any one of four ways. The easiest is to take advantage of someone elses catch and scrounge a tablespoon or so of starter from a flourishing pot. Old-timers preferred this way because their only alternative was the most difficult method traping some wild yeast from the air and growing it into a starter, which could taste wonderful or terrible, depending on the quality of the catch. In winter, catching any yeast at all was unlikely because everything was frozen into inactivity and catching a good wild yeast for a starter is as difficult now as ever. Some bakers believe youll do better if you try in warm weather in a kitchen where many loaves of bread have been baked, because leftover yeast spores might be floating in the air.

Two simpler ways of creating a starter are now possible. One is to use commercial yeast, growing it in flour and water and essentially letting it become wild again; the other is to buy a culture from long established vendor. Specialty and natural food stores often sell them, or you could try looking online. Sourdoughs International (208-382-4828; www.sourdo.com) in Cascade, Idaho, carries starters from around the world. King Arthur Flour (800-827-6836; www. kingarthurflour.com) carries French and New England sourdough starters, and for taste of authentic Oregon Trail sourdough, contact the friends of the late Carl Griffith, an enthusiast who shared his familys starter throughout his lifetime (http://home.att. net/~carlsfriends;CarlsFriends@att.net).

Once you have your starter, whether it was purchased, received from a friend, or grown wild, you are ready to try these recipes.

4 cups unbleached white flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons honey
4 cups potato water

Mix all the ingredients together in a large, non-metal container. The container should be large enough to allow the mixture to more than double in bulk. Let the mixture stand, loosely covered, in a warm place (about 85F is ideal). In two or three days either the mixture will begin to froth, expand, and smell sour, or it will mold and smell worse. If the first happens, you have captured wild yeast and created your own starter. Let it season a couple of days in the refrigerator and then try baking with it to see if you like its flavor. (You may not. Some yeasts will leaven but they taste terrible.)