There’s not a heartbreak that a crust of bread and a slab of butter can’t fix
A Recipe
1. Feed your starter
I started baking the first day of lockdown, its something I’ve always wanted to do. My dad used to bake every weekend and I thought it was just the best thing. There’s nothing more comforting than the smell of warm, fresh bread. So I started. I made my own sourdough starter using Brickhouse bread’s recipe. I learned that making sourdough is a labour of love - it took 7 days of feeding and nurturing my starter before it was ready to bake with.
2. Mix the flour, water and starter
On the first day I baked two killer loaves and it sparked a baking joy. I baked every other day from then on, and as each loaf rose in the oven, my confidence grew a little more. I soon started to sell it to friends and dreamt of opening a bakery of my own.
3. Shape and leave to rise
During this time I talked a lot about my newfound love of baking. I had my best friend supporting me and helping come up with bakery names. He’d stay up every Wednesday and Thursday night until the early hours of the morning to keep me company on the late night bakes. Together we would talk whilst I shaped and kneaded the bread. Saying goodbye as I left the bread to rise. As the weeks went on and the late nights blurred into early mornings kneading, proving, baking, I realised that I liked him as more than a friend. I told him. It didn’t go to plan, he didn’t give me the response that I had hoped for. He said “let’s still be good friends, things can be the same”. I thought they could be. My family convinced me we would always remain friends and of course “there were plenty more fish in the sea anyway”
So at his request and with hope in my heart we continued being just as close, maybe closer over the next couple of months and those late night phone calls for hours and hours continued.
4. Bake
The turning point was the weekend of my birthday. He turned up to surprise me, and it made me realise how desperately hard it is to be friends with someone you’re madly in love with. I decided I needed to look after myself and end the friendship for a bit, to give myself time to breathe, time to rise.
5. Leave to cool
That was the worst week. I stopped baking, the bread was still good, but not as good. I couldn’t face baking without having him on FaceTime. It was as though my starter was mimicking my feelings, it lost it’s bubbles at the same time as I did. I decided to put it away, out of sight at the back of the fridge.
6. Have a slice of bread and butter (or two)
I embarked on a text book heartbreak recovery. I sat around and nurtured myself by eating as many chocolatey things as possible and re watching ‘Love, Rosie’ over and over again (my Mum said that’s when she knew it was serious!). I moped around in my pyjamas until one of my family suggested I may want to shower. It was at that moment I decided that I was fed up of hearing myself saying ‘I wish I’d done this’ or ‘ I want my life to be like that’ because fuck it! I had cut a toxic friend from my life. I tried to forget about the boy I liked and I decided to stop living my life for other people.
7. Make another loaf
Two months have passed and I’ve just taken my starter back out of the fridge. He’s sitting in the kitchen after I fed him earlier tonight. I think he and I are ready to start baking again.
I’ve grown up a lot over the past two months. I’ve taken back my life, not that it was taken away from me, but I’ve realised I have the tendency to push away my feelings and not stand my ground on what I want. I haven’t cried over my best friend for a while now. I think baking once more will be the final step to finish this painful chapter. It’s time for another loaf.
8. Enjoy
The first step to baking a sourdough loaf is to scoop out most of your starter. It feels strange at first, to spend so long preparing something only to use up most of it in one go. This then gets baked into the bread, and you top up your starter with more flour and water. You have to wait a while for your starter to eat what you’ve given it, and then you’re ready to bake again. Before I began to write this piece, I could see the metaphors that tied together my friendship and my love of baking. I thought that our relationship was the bread - being shaped, kneaded, proving and then baking, ready to be eaten. Only the loaf came out flat. It wasn’t until I got half way through writing that I realised I am the starter. I gave half of myself away, without getting anything in return. I’ve realised over the past few months that I can’t expect anybody else to feed me, I need to learn to fill my own cup and only then, once risen and bubbling, will I be ready to bake with somebody else.
9. If you’re searching for the (nearly always) perfect loaf
So here’s the recipe for the not-always-perfect-but-always -tasty sourdough. All credit goes to @brickhousebread. Thanks Brickhouse, I’m not sure how I would have gotten through lockdown if it wasn’t for your bread.
Building your starter
Before you make a loaf of sourdough bread you have to make the starter. This takes around 7 days but it’s really easy.
In a bowl mis 150g of strong white bread flour, 50g of whole wheat flour and 200g of warm water. Mix well until all combined and either pour into a tub or you can leave it in the bowl.
You can give the mix a sniff and it should smell like damp flour (not the best smell but it won’t ever smell that nice). Leave the mixture at room temp for 2 days. Check on it after 24 hours and it should be starting to bubble. You can smell it again and it should smell slightly sweeter. Leave it for another 24 hours to finish fermenting.
After 48 hours it should have grown a little in size and have bubbles. It should also smell a bit sweeter.
Now you need to refresh the starter, to do this you need to pour 200g into another bowl and pour the rest away. Clean out your bowl/ container you used to keep it in. Add 100g of strong white bread flour and 100g of warm water to your 200g of remaining starter. Mix and pour back into your original container/bowl.
Repeat this exact feeding process every 24 hours for the next 5 days. Your starter will start to smell different and be more active (more bubbles). Try feed your starter roughly around the same time everyday. I found the best flour is from Shipton Mill (insert website here).
After 5 days your starter should have grown and be even more bubbles. The mix should have more body in it, it should be feeling more like a very loose dough and not live a flour water paste. The smell should be a lot sweeter and lactic, a little like cheap strawberry yoghurt.
If it doesn’t display these characteristics, try feeding it for a couple more days.
Finally, refresh your starter. Pour 100g of your starter into a bowl with 190g strong white bread flour, 10g wholemeal flour and 200g warm water. Discard the rest of the starter. Leave your refreshed starter for 12-14 hours at room temp.
The recipe below is for two loaves. Once you’ve baked with your starter make sure to refresh the left over 100g of starter with 190g strong white bread flour, 10g wholemeal and 200g warm water. Leave it at room temp until its risen about 1-2 cm, then place in the fridge. The cold temp will slow the fermentation process so it doesn’t spoil. Remember to feed your starter everyday. 100g - 200g of starter (discard the rest), 100g SW flour, 100g warm water. . When you want to bake again take the starter out of the fridge and feed it 4-8 hours before you bake. I’ve found it’s best to feed him and leave on the kitchen side just before you go to bed then you’re ready to bake first thing in the morning.
Sourdough bread recipe
Okay, so this recipe makes 2 x 1kg loaves, sourdough freezes really well so you can always freeze one or just half the recipe… or if you’re like me and my family, eat both loaves in one day! You’ll also need a good chunk of about 4 hours to make this bread. Its mainly proving time and you’ll only spend 10-15 minutes hands on with the dough.
You will need:
Accurate weighing scales
large mixing bowl
Either two proving baskets or two bowls lined with t-towels and sprinkled with flour
Cast iron pot with a lid or a baking tray
Ingredients:
(Makes two loaves)
860g strong white bread flour
50g dark rye flour
50g wholemeal (or use 100g of either wholemeal or rye)
640g warm water
380g starter
25g salt (any)
Method
Mix the all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave for 45 minutes in a warm place.
Add 25g of salt and 20g of warm water. Mix these into the dough until well combined and you can’t feel the salt granules. Cover bowl with a T-towel and leave for another 45 minutes.
Use a stretch and fold technique to knead the dough. Wet your hands so that the dough doesn’t stick to your fingers. Stretch one side of the dough up so it's about 30cm and fold back onto it’s self. Turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat, repeat this four times till you’ve folded every side on the dough. Cover with a T-towel and leave for 45 minutes. Repeat this whole process again another two times.
Your dough should now have tripled in size and become glossy. Empty onto a floured surface. Divide the dough into two 1kg pieces.
Shaping the dough - Scoop both hands under the dough and rotate clockwise. Keep doing this until it forms a ball, usually around three turns. (there are loads of videos on how to do this online)
Repeat with the other half of the dough so you that you. have two balls of dough. Leave both on the floured surface for 20-30 minutes, cover with a clean tea towel.
After 20-30 minutes, its time to finish shaping. To do this, flip the dough so you can see the bottom. Take either side of the dough, stretching and folding it back on its self, overlap one side over the other. Rotate 90 degrees and perform the same gentle fold.
Flour your proving basket/ t-towel covered bowl, place the dough in your basket/bowl, making sure the folds are facing upwards. Cover with another tea towel and leave for 1 hour. After a hour you can either place the covered dough in the fridge overnight or you can leave to prove for another hour.
(If you leave it in the fridge overnight, in the morning take out and leave to warm up for a hour).
Now it’s time to bake. Heat the oven to 225 degrees, place your cast iron pot or baking tray in the oven to heat up for around 20 minutes.
Remove pan or tray from oven. Tip the dough onto a sheet of baking paper. Use a serrated knife to score a 1cm deep mark into the loaf (there’s loads of designs you can use but I find a score down the middle is usually the best). Very carefully place the baking paper on to the tray or into the pot.
If you’re using a pot put the lid back on and bake for 20 mins before removing the lid and baking for a further 20 minutes.
If using a tray, place it in the middle of the. oven and put a smaller tray at the bottom of the oven, place a handful of ice cubes in this smaller tray. This will create the same steaming effect as you’d get in the cast iron pot. Bake for 40 minutes or until dark brown on top.
To check the loaf is fully cooked, tap on the bottom and it should sound hollow. Leave loaf to fully cool before you tuck in!
And you’re done! If you keep feeding your starter it should live for years and you can make thousands of loaves from it!
Tilly Shayler