Curiosity 58: Sourdough

A quick and dirty post for today.

Last May, we visited our friends Jan and Catharina in Copenhagen. While we were there, Jan made at least two, maybe three loaves of sourdough bread, one of them full-on rugbrød—delicious! (The bread in this photo: Jan's.) 

He recommended a book to me, The Perfect Loaf by Maurizio Leo, and when I got home, I started making sourdough bread myself. 

Well, I made some starter. And let it mature. For a couple of months. But eventually I got my courage up, and started making bread. 

Meanwhile, my friend Miranda, who also makes sourdough bread, mentioned a FB page, Sourdough Geeks, which I subscribed to. I find it amusing. First, there are the people who post photos of what appear to be perfectly beautiful loaves of bread and ask, "What did I do wrong???????" Sometimes people respond, Oh, you overproofed—or, Oh, you underproofed—though mostly people say, What's wrong? Nothing's wrong! It looks perfect! And then there are all the helpful recipes, which appear to be infinite variations on a simple theme of starter, flour, water, and salt—though of course, it's not the simple ingredients that make a loaf of bread, it's the entire process: mixing, stretching, folding, sometimes slapping, bulk fermenting, shaping, scoring, baking. It is not for the faint of heart.

Here's the first loaf I made that departed from the basic recipe. It's rosemary olive, and I think it may have been overproofed?—but what the heck, it tasted really good! 

Anyway, for today's q&d post, I just wanted to save links to a few of the websites that the Sourdough Geeks keep mentioning—with recipes, techniques, and advice. 

The Perfect Loaf, which on its homepage right now features a Kernza Sourdough loaf, as well as Walnut Cranberry; Spelt, Rye, and Whole Wheat; and Cardamom rolls. And the other day I wrote to the site's proprietor—and author of the book I mentioned above—with a question about a weight (for lemon peel) specified in a recipe, and he replied right away and at length. I am a fan!

The Clever Carrot (this site is half sourdough, half tasty-looking recipes), which on its homepage features, as well as a beginner's guide, sourdough popovers. I'm making popovers for our Christmas dinner! They might just have to be sourdough!

Little Spoon Farm, featuring all sorts of cookies right now, but otherwise devoted to sourdough, sourdough, and more sourdough. 

The Pantry Mama, featuring "easy sourdough baking on any schedule!"

Make It Dough, a baking blog for sourdough bread and sourdough discard recipes. 

The Feathered Nester

Sourdough Geeks itself offers a host of recipes.

And to finish, I offer Sourdough for Beginners. 

I'm sure there are more... Sourdough has an enthusiastic following, that's for sure. During the early days of the pandemic, for example, Ziploc bags of starter (named Godric) started appearing on telephone poles and bulletin boards all over San Francisco. Part of the motivating factor for this popularity was the absence of yeast in the supermarkets—and of bread on the shelves. So people took things into their own hands. Good for them!

Those days are past now, thank goodness (though Covid will always be with us, no doubt). But me, I have a little more time on my hands. And making a tasty loaf of bread, I'm finding, is a satisfying way to spend it.