Start Me Up

I am a Professional Chef. It is a job title which arouses, in the uninitiated, certain romanticized visions of artful cookery. People imagine, when they think of the chef's trade, a Jamie Oliver-esque montage of ultra-speedy chopping, half second sautéing, and little pots of bubbling sauces, all culminating in a close up of placing the final garnish on an immaculate, finished dish. This is not exactly accurate. All of those things happen, certainly, but with a lot of long, hot, hard work in between. Chef's, would you believe, fall victim to the romance as well. I once asked a group of my chef friends what they imagined professional cookery to be before they embarked on their careers. One friend envisioned “stepping out of the cool room with a tray of eggs, brushing the hair from my eyes, and gently patting the flour off my apron.” My own vision was much less clear. I sort of imagined whisking things in very large bowls.

Which, I suppose, I get to do from time to time; chefs work with some comically over-sized equipment.

Dig a bit deeper and a civilian will tell you that a chef is a person who knows how to cook most anything. While I know plenty of chefs who would be glad to tell you they are capable of cooking anything (the industry attracts a certain, overconfident type), the truth is that each of us specialize in some way or another. There are division of culture: an expert in Japanese food cannot reasonably be expected to prepare a tamale. There are differences in the level of cooking: it's as unfair to expect a burger cook to know how to work with truffles as it is to expect a chef with haute cuisine training to whip up a batch of buffalo wings.

Finally, and most surprisingly to some, there are distinctions between types of cooking withing each of these previously mentioned divisions. In French cooking, for example, there is a whole discipline devoted to the curing and preservation of meats. Charcuterie, as it is called, is an entire profession within itself, though only a small part of the professional kitchen. It is genuinely possible to spend an entire cooking career perfecting sauces alone. It gets that specific. Pastry, the industry's collective name for all things desert does not include baking, which refers only to breads.

Which brings me, more or less, to the topic of this week's post: bread. I am an avid hobbyist baker. Professional chef. Hobby baker. It is a distinction I am acutely aware of because I know real bakers, and I know I am not one. I wish, on a very selfish level, that more people understood that being a “professional chef” does not in any way mean I automatically know how to make a loaf of bread. You see, when I produce a beautiful, crusty, chewy, aromatic loaf of sourdough bread, of which I am immensely proud, most people say dismissively “of course, you're a chef.”

Yes. A chef. Not a baker. This is really good work for an amateur. Come on people.

I'm thinking about this mostly because I noticed that I often suggest the use of a sourdough starter in recipes here at OHC, but I've never told you how to make one.

Why should you use a sourdough starter? Flavor mostly. Bread made with a sourdough starter have a depth and breadth of flavor you just can't produce using bakers yeast. On top of this there is the pride in crafting a loaf of bread in the same manner it has been made for the past 5000 or so years. It's a tradition of simple, vital skill.

Purchasing yeast, rather than using your own starter, is a relatively new historical development. 18th and 19th century brewers would sell the barm (skimmings) or yeast dregs from cider and beer which were then used by home and professional bakers. Sometime around 1850 yeast was produced in cakes (called press yeast) for baking. During the Second World War dried yeast was developed as a shelf-stable, military-friendly product. Rapid rise yeast soon followed, after which came instant yeast, which is fast becoming the standard.

The problem with this steady march towards ever speedier yeast is that it comes at the expense of flavor. A loaf of sourdough can take several hours to rise just once, where a loaf made with modern yeasts will rise twice and be ready for baking in the same time. Some bakers using a sourdough starter even slow down the proving (rising) process by refrigerating the dough over night. This extra time, this slow proof, allows all those complex flavors we associate with great, chewy, European-style bread to develop. You'll need a starter if you want to make good bread.

Sourdough Starter

A sourdough starter is a living thing. It is a colony of wild yeast and lactic acid-producing bacteria. It is this combination that produces the characteristic sour flavors in these types of bread.

There are several ways to make a starter. The easiest is to find a friend with one and get them to give you a bit. Then you can keep it alive by feeding it, using it whenever you need.

Other methods involve capturing wild yeast one way or another, and then propagating it in a slurry of flour and water. I have made a couple starters, with varying levels of success. The starters which have been the most consistent and produced the tastiest bread, I've made using grapes.

Grapes naturally have yeast on their skins. We'll take advantage of that here by using organic (hopefully not sprayed) and unwashed grapes (look for ones with the white, powdery bloom still intact) and submerging them for a week or so in flour and water so that the yeasts have a chance to multiply.

Two more things... First: wash everything you plan on using to make your starter very thoroughly. You want to introduce the right kinds of yeasts and bacteria, not the weird shit that lives on the half-washed wooden spoons in your utensil drawer. Second: Whenever I call for water in the starter recipe (or any sourdough recipe for that matter), I mean water at just above room temperature – about 22-25ºC. This is warm enough to strongly encourage yeast and bacterial growth, and not hot enough to kill either.

1 large bunch of grapes, organic and unwashed if possible
500g flour
1 litre lukewarm water

Tie your bunch of grapes in a muslin or cheesecloth bag. Mix together the 500g flour and 1 litre water in a large container with a tight-fitting lid.

Hold the bag of grapes over the container and squeeze the juices from the grapes into the flour and water mix. Drop the bag into the container, stir and seal. Keep at room temperature for 4-5 days, opening the lid once a day to allow any built up gas to escape, all the while preventing excessive airflow to the young culture.

After 5 days feed the starter. Add 250 m of water and 125g of flour. Stir together, agitating the bag of grapes and replace the lid. Stand another 5 days.

When the second 5 days have elapsed, remove the bag of grapes and discard. You now have a juvenile sourdough starter. Over the next 3 days you'll feed it in order to strengthen it and encourage a healthy balance between the bacteria and the yeast (more about this some other time).

Remove 500ml of the starter and discard the rest. (If you don't periodically use or discard some of the starter, you'll end up with a gigantic bucket of the stuff.) In a container with a non-airtight lid (a tight-fitting lid may burst under fermentation pressure), mix the reserved 500ml starter with 200ml water and 200g flour. Stand 12 hours and then add 200ml water and 200g flour again.

12 hours later, pour off most the contents of the container and add 200ml water and 200g flour. After another 12 hours add the same again.

The third day feed the starter again at 12-hour intervals, discarding approximately half the volume at the first feeding.

After this point you have a full grown sourdough starter. Whenever you wish to use it, plan to start your recipe at the point just before you would feed the starter – when there are the greatest number of hungry little organisms in your culture. When baking, you'll be using the starter you would otherwise be discarding. Maintain the starter at room temperature, feeding every day as above.

I, sadly, abuse the living bejesus out of my starter, which I have maintained for a decade or so now. I often leave the poor culture to starve in the back of my fridge in not so much suspended animation, but rather a forced hibernation. When I want to use it, I pull it out, feed it for a few days based on the above schedule, and away it goes, producing me the most delicious of breads. I'm not suggesting that you be so cruel to your starter – most people who maintain one properly fed them once or twice daily – but it is possible to revive a starter after a bit of neglect. Just sayin'.

We'll spend the next few weeks using our new starters. And we'll start this week with a very simple one, pancakes.



Sourdough Pancakes

Obviously maintaining a starter requires wasting a fair amount of it - as the method has you dumping a bit off every day. In the past, this schedule of feeding twice daily and dumping once wold have meant, rather, feeding twice and removing an amount to make bread with every day. However, as you and I are not likely to bake a loaf of bread each day, you will have some excess starter. Every now and again, I use this excess to make some deliciously complex pancakes.

Sourdough pancakes are a bit less fluffy than regular pancakes. This is because the overnight fermentation necessary for the distinctive flavor encourages the development of gluten, which is what makes bread chewy. The extra bite gives this breakfast an air of a meal of substance. You don't need to eat many to fill up. This makes enough pancakes for two people.

150g starter
150g flour
150ml water
1 egg
20g butter, melted (1 heaped Tbsp)
30g sugar (2 Tbsp)
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda

Place the sourdough starter in a glass or ceramic bowl (non-reactive is the key) with the flour and water. Mix just to combine and leave covered with a loose-fitting lid (to allow fermentation gases to escape). Leave overnight in a warm place.

The next morning, stir in the remaining ingredients, mixing only enough to combine.

Cook the pancakes in a lightly oiled or buttered pan on medium heat until they are set around the edges and the bubbles which burst near the center of the pancake remain open. Flip and cook a few minutes further, until lightly golden.

Serve with maple syrup or honey butter.