Recipe: Sourdough Bread
I'm posting this here today as part of the IJ Asylum Meme.
Slightly modified from the recipe in Alaska Sourdough: the Real Stuff by a Real Alaskan by Ruth Allman.
2 cups Sourdough Starter (To make the Sourdough Starter: Dump into the Sourdough Pot (which I used one of those disposable plastic container with a lid, the 8-cup size. I think Glad came up with the idea, but the ones I bought were Albertson's House Brand. Package of three for about five dollars.) 2 cups thick potato water (see below) 2 Tbsp. sugar 2 cups flour (more or less) (heaping cups of flour seems about right) 1/2 tsp yeast (optional) (I didn't use it)
Boil potatoes with jackets on until they fall to pieces. (I started with one potato, which was all I had at the time, cut up in two cups of water.) Lift skins out, mash potatoes making a puree. Cool. (without a lid on the pot -- I'm pretty sure this is where you pick up the atmospheric wild yeast.) Add more water to make sufficient liquid, if necessary. Richer the potato water, richer the starter. Put all ingredients in Pot. Beat until smooth creamy batter. Cover. (If you get those little plastic containers, you can us the cover that comes with it, just don't snap it down.) Set aside in warm place to start fermentation. Three days later, add a spoonful of sugar and a couple spoonsful of flour, and some water if it seems too thick, and stir it smooth. Cover it and set it back in its warm spot to work more. After a week, it should have a million tiny bubbles in it and look and smell similar to sour cream. Then it's ready to use.
Whenever alcohol (hooch!) collects on the top of your sourdough, just stir it back in.
You should use your sourdough at least once a week. The night before you want to make something, beat together some white flour with some cold water (one heaping cup of flour per cup of water is about right) until it's smooth and lump-free. You can use a metal bowl and a metal whisk or fork for this part, but whenever you're touching the actual sour stuff, you should use a wood (or plastic) spoon. Pour the flour/water batter into your sourdough and mix it in well. That way, the next day when you want to take out and use a cupful or two cupfuls of sourdough for your recipe, the amount of sourdough in the container will be sufficient. I typically wipe down the inside of the sourdough container with a paper towel to keep the sides free from splashes, which can support mold, since splashes dry out too much for the yeast, and yucky fuzzy mold things out-compete the yeast.
If you haven't used the sourdough enough, you can fake it out by removing a cupful or so of sourdough and just throwing it away, then replenishing the culture with a cup of flour mixed with a cup of water.
If the culture starts to smell bad or look really gross, you can pour off most of it and salvage a few spoonfuls of the culture that don't seem so bad, and mix the little bit you save with some flour-and-water, to continue the culture. When that happened to me, I used a new clean container. -- And now back to the bread recipe! lol)
1 cup warm water 1/4 cup sugar, or just a little more 3 Tablespoons cooking oil 1 teaspoon salt 5 cups whole-wheat flour, approximately
In a non-metallic bowl, at least 3 quarts capacity, combine sourdough starter, water, sugar, oil, salt and HALF the flour (2 1/2 cups). Beat until smooth. Cover and let stand until thoroughly bubbly (Ruth Allman says until doubled in bulk, but I've never had this "soft sponge", as she calls it, do that). This'll take a few hours, probably, depending on the temperature and your starter. Knead in another 2 1/2 cups flour, more or less, until it seems like bread dough -- about 8 minutes kneading, the way I do it. Once it's bread dough, acting like a ball of dough and all instead of a bowl full of glop, put a Tablespoon or two of cooking oil into the bowl (no need to wash it first), put the dough ball on top of the oil, rotate the dough ball until it has oil all over the outside, and then cover the bowl (plastic wrap, possibly sprayed with release agent like Pam, is a good material for this, but a dish towel will work) and let sit until doubled in bulk. Then punch down, spray two 8 1/2 by 4 inch bread pans with Pam or equivalent, divvy dough into two equalish pieces, and put dough into bread pans. Cover the pans with plastic wrap, and let rise until the dough is about at the tops of the pans. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 45 minutes.