Sourdough (No-Knead) Bread

If you read the It has arrived! post, you know that I have received some dry sourdough starter in the mail. I couldn't wait to bake some bread with it. I did, and here's how it looked like:


Bread making is a complicated business, and sourdough bread making is probably even more so, because of the issue of keeping a sourdough culture alive, feeding it, preparing a portion for baking etc. Then there's the no-knead technique, which apparently started with the NY Times publishing a recipe for bread that required no kneading and produced a perfect loaf of bread. Since then, and it wasn't long ago, there are many no-knead enthusiasts, and plenty of variations around that theme.

I am going to produce here an account as accurate as possible of how I managed to bake the loaf of bread pictured above, so that I can refer to it whenever I want to bake more. It takes planning ahead because of the long fermentation times.

The actual recipe I used came from the site Breadtopia.com, which you can get here, with video instructions and all; plenty of advice on how to handle sourdough starter was collected on the Carl Griffith Sourdough Page. I will be assuming that you have an active sourdough culture in your fridge, which may not be in a very good shape.

Day 1 - Producing one cup of active starter

Put one tsp of your sourdough culture in a clear glass jar. Add one tbs of warm water and one tbs of flour. Mix with a wooden chopstick, put the lid on loosely and let rest in a warm place. When that develops some bubbles, add 1/4 cup of warm water and 1/4 cup of flour. You want a thick batter. Mix well and set aside until it bubbles up. Then add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water. Once this ferments, we have one cup of active sourdough stater to use in the recipe. We only use 1/2 cup, I added the other 1/2 cup to the culture I have in the fridge, throwing away an equivalent amount before adding this starter.

I used mineral water because my tap water has plenty of chlorine in it and that is particularly bad for developing an active culture. Avoiding metal utensils seems to be a good idea also. The time between the feedings will depend on many factors. I think it's safe to start one day in the morning to obtain the full cup of active starter the next morning.

Day 2 - Making the dough

I assembled the dough at 7pm and let it ferment until the next morning. Over-proofing seems to be a factor, so if one cannot bake the next morning it may be a good idea to let the dough ferment in the fridge. Mine took about 14 hours to fully rise. Had I not been able to continue the process at the end of the 14 hours, it is possible that I would not have obtained good results, again according to what I have read.

To form the dough, mix together

• 4 oz (115g) of whole wheat flour
  
• 12 oz (340g) of all-purpose white flour (bread flour is better)
  
• 1 1/2 tsp salt

in a glass or porcelain bowl. Then dissolve 1/2 cup of active starter in 1 1/2 cup of mineral water. Pour that into the flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon. My understanding is that the dough should be wet, but one may need to add a bit more flour to get to the right consistency. I had to. You should be able to knead it a couple of times, but not be able to knead it like you would a normal bread dough. I tried to achieve the consistency of the batter you can see in the video.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise overnight. The recipe calls for 18 hours; mine at the end of 14 hours was very much risen and ready for the next step.

Day 3 - Baking the bread

The dough is going to look very bubbly, and it will be very wet and difficult to handle. Dust the countertop with flour, and dump the dough on it. Dust your fingers also and the top of the dough. Spread it with your fingers until you are able to fold it in thirds and then in half. Check the video. Cover it with plastic and let it rest for 15 minutes or so.

After that time, one must grab the dough and shape it into a rough ball. This again is not easy because the dough is wet and sticky. Dust your hands with flour, and the dough also. Put this on top of a tea towel sprinkled with cornmeal and cover it with another tea towel. Let it rise for about 2 hours. If you lightly stick your finger in the dough, it should not spring back immediately.

Heat the oven to 240C with a Le Creuset cast iron pot, lid on, inside. Mine is size 26, holding 5 1/2 US qt, and worked well for this recipe. I'd like to see what happens with a smaller one, though. When the oven is hot, gently put the dough inside the pot, put the lid on, and let it bake for 20-25 minutes. The heat should come from top and bottom, but do not have the fan on.

After the 25 minutes period, open the oven and remove the lid from the pot. Turn the heat down to 220 C, and bake for 10 minutes more. These times may need adjustments depending on how wet the dough is and, of course, on your oven.

Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a rack before slicing.

The Kitchen Diaries

Everytime I make a recipe from one of the cookbooks we own, and we enjoy the result, I mark the corresponding page with an index Post-it marker. Some books end up having a lot more markers than others, but the winner is clearly The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater.

The idea behind the book is very clever, and I suppose it was this precise book that prompted us to start our own food diary. Nigel is a brilliant food writer, it is amazing how he can write about food in a such simple yet utterly cativating way. And the recipes work, one after the other. He clearly writes as a home cook to home cooks, and not as chef to amateur cooks.

This time it was "A frosted marmelade cake" and "Pork ribs with honey and anise". Here's a (not particulary flattering) picture of the ribs:

Busy III

Well, this is bound to keep us busy for a few years to come...

It has arrived!

My sourdough starter, that is. I've been reading up on sourdough bread, how does it differ from conventional bread, how to make it, etc, and inevitably I tried to create a starter. After about a week of feeding it, I gave up. It just wasn't working, I suppose. If you read webpages written by people who actually work with sourdough, they always at some point recommend that one gets hold of good known starter, rather than trying to make one's own. Once you start going down that route, it's hard to resist to the romantic idea of Carl's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter. I sent them a self-addressed envelope a few weeks ago, and it arrived today with a few grams of dry starter inside. To be continued...

Falafel and pita bread

It's rarely the case that I cook something and do not find on it a myriad of defects. I guess that's normal: perfection comes with practise and at home one never cooks the same dish three or four times in a row to be able to improve on it. Today was a bit of an exception. It was by no means perfect, but it exceeded my expectations. To put it bluntly, I never ate neither falafel nor pita bread that were as tasty as the ones I made today.

As I don't have any cookbooks that cover middle-eastern food, I resorted to probably what's at the same time the most powerful and the most dangerous source: the web. I saw plenty of recipes, some clearly lacking in coherence, and then selected one for each, and a few more for backup, so that I ended up not following any in particular. Here's what I did:

Falafel

• 1 cup chickpeas, soaked for 18 hours, water changed 2 times
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp chili pepper flakes
  
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 large handful of parsley and coriander, chopped
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 tbsp flour (more or less)

Drain the chickpeas, discard any that look bad. Put them, along with all the other ingredients, except baking powder and flour, inside a bowl, if using a blender, or inside a food processor. In case it's not clear, the chickpeas are not cooked at this point, they are raw. Blend until it forms a fine-grain paste - were're not looking for a puree. Check for salt, although at this point it's a bit hard to tell whether there's enough. Add the baking powder, and one tablespoon of flour at the time until it all comes together in a cement-like paste. Refrigerate for an hour or so. I shaped the falafel as quenelles using two spoons and deep-fried them until golden.

Pita bread

• 500 g flour + a few tbsp more
  
• 1 sachet of easy bake yeast (7g)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp olive oil + a bit more to coat
• 300 ml warm water

Put the flour in a bowl along with all the other dry ingredients. Mix well. Make a well in the middle, and add the water and olive oil. Mix with a spoon until it all comes together. Tip the dough onto a lightly-floured surface and knead it until it gets elastic. This amount of water was perfect this time, I imagine it may need adjustments depending on many factors. Coat another bowl with olive oil and put the dough inside. Move the dough around to make sure it's all coated in oil. Cover it with a tea towel and let it rest for 2 hours or so, until it doubles in size.

After that period, tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead it for a minute or so. Form 12 equal-sized balls and let them rest. In the meawhile, heat the oven to 200C with a cookie sheet inside close to the heat source.

Roll each ball into a disk using a rolling pin. Thin disks, how thin it's hard to say, less than 1/2 cm perhaps. Almost all the pita puffed, but a few did not. I wonder if it was the thickness of the disks...

When the oven is hot, drop the disks on the cookie sheet, a few at the time. After a few minutes, they will start puffing. Turn them over and wait until they brown a bit. Mine were a bit pale, but I guess that if you let them cook too long they will just dry up. The ones that came out nice turned out to be perfect pockets that you could slice open and fill with the falafel. Next time I may put them under the broiler to see what happens.

Dressing
This was a bit improvised, simple, but turned out really good: whisk two yoghurts until smooth and add 1/2 cup of chopped cucumber (remove the skin, say 1/2 cm cubes). Season with salt and one tsp of cumin. Chill.

Take a look at the result. Pretty, eh? We couldn't stop eating it...


Edit: you successfully freeze the falafel after they are shaped. What I did was to stick them in the freezer on a tray until they are frozen, and then put them in a ziplock bag. Fry them frozen, no need to thaw in advance.