Saturday bonus: The Sane Guide to Sourdough

It's really much easier than the man wants you to think

We shall fight the sourdough obscurantists on the forums, we shall fight them in the YouTube comments, we shall fight in WhatsApp and in the streets, we shall fight in the small plates restaurants; we shall never surrender.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m thinking about food. I just ate the last slice of last week’s sourdough bread that I froze as breakfast. No I will not apologise for eating and making sourdough.

The issue with sourdough is that the field is tainted by obscurantists. Ludicrous, contemptible instructions like these plague the web and they ruin the reputation of the bread that I eat and enjoy eating.

I like some of JW’s content but this is just silly. He tells you to ferment the sourdough starter in controlled conditions in a ‘levain’. I don’t really know what that is, apart from the fact it is large, expensive, electronically controlled, and I don’t have one and never will.
In a recent trip to Glasgow, I heard someone talk about how they needed to arrange for someone to look after their sourdough for them while they were away—like a dog.

All of the above—forget it! Sourdough starters are not dogs! They are very robust agglomerations of flour and yeast! They do not need kennels! If you go away, stick it in the fridge and it will be absolutely fine for multiple weeks with no attention!

Säuerdø

To learn the art of sourdough, you must forget the lies that the sourdough obscurantists have fed you. Your loaf might not be an Instagram thirst trap, it might be slightly flatter than the pert but resource-intensive buns of YouTube, but who actually cares?

Here is the Alfie Robinson approved guide to layman’s sourdough:

• Make the starter. You need a transparent container. You need some flour (wholegrain rye or YQ wheat, something old world in vibes and probably somewhat more nutritious for the yeast). You also need water. I add 50g flour and 50g water to my container, once a day, at the point at which I remember to add said ingredients. Stir with a knife so it’s easy to wipe off the sourdough gloop. If the thing isn’t living yet, and you’re getting close to the top, bin some of the sourdough.

  Do not keep records of how much flour or water is in the container. Just bin it if it gets too large.

• Make your first loaf. I use a large quantity of sourdough starter which ensures leavening if the sourdough isn’t at its pretty perfect peak of puff power. When the jar is near the top and the sourdough has little air holes throughout, it’s ready.

  150g sourdough starter

  300--450g flour (white flour if you want maximum leavening)

  200g water and then carefully add more water until the dough is hydrated

  10g ish salt.

  Mix all of the above. Leave them for about a day, during the course of which, stretch the dough with your hands a bit to develop gluten, when you can be bothered.

  After mixing your sourdough, stick the starter in the fridge for suspended animation. You do not have to do anything here. When you next take the starter out, it will have developed a layer of grey liquid on the top, and it will smell alcoholic. This is your sourdough living its best life—she thrives. Don’t pour the weird grey alcohol off, it’s fine.

• Bake your first loaf. Get as hot as your oven will go by praying to the correct Scandinavian gods. And if you don’t have an AGA… you can actually preheat your oven to whatever temperature you want—isn’t that amazing? Stick a heavy pan/dutch oven in there so it also gets really hot. Do not use something with a long handle because you WILL touch it when you take it out of the oven and you WILL go to A&E and you WILL NOT blame me for this.

  Persuade your proto-loaf to slump into the pan, stick the lid on, and leave it for ca.45 minutes. Check it. Do you want to eat it yet? If so, take it out. If not, leave it in with the lid off to brown. For about 5 mins. Things happen fast with the lid off.

  Leave it to cool. Eat. Comest. Dine.

That’s it folks. It’s easier than dried yeast in my opinion, it’s cheaper than buying sourdough, and you don’t have to wait in a queue which I have experienced in Norwich and heard about in Glasgow: imagine the plight of north London. You really don’t need any special equipment, patience, or galaxy brain techniques. The fact that sourdough is a living beast makes it a lot more forgiving, rather than less.