Sourdough

One of my favorite things about good recipes is the way that certain foods and smells can evoke powerful feelings and memories, inviting feelings of home and family, preserving a link between homes and hearths and generations of bakers. No food more perfectly conveys this relationship between food and emotion than homemade bread.
My grandma's rolls will always prompt memories of Thanksgiving, and Banana Bread makes me think of my mother. Nothing welcomes in the change of seasons from summer to autumn like Pumpkin Bread straight out of the oven, and Sourdough will always remind me of my dad.

And yet, even though I enjoy baking (and eating) homemade bread, it wasn't until this last week that I finally found the courage to attempt Sourdough. The very idea of creating a sourdough starter was simply intimidating. It ferments on the counter and you feed it periodically? And what if I put in all the time and effort and it doesn't pay off in the end?
But it turns out, like most baking, you just have to follow the instructions. The starter was not as intimidating as I thought it would be (and for minimal effort, I am felt pretty pleased with myself :), and the only tricks to making the bread were finding the right recipe and planning ahead.
​ It's the prettiest dough I've ever handled--with possibly the greatest pay-off--and the labor of love involved in preparing it will undoubtedly add to the sentiment my family will associate with its distinct flavor. 

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RESOURCES, TIPS, AND TAKEAWAYS

• I used a recipe from The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger to create my starter, but I've been using "Feeding and Maintaining Your Sourdough Starter" by King Arthur Flour to maintain it.
• Of all the Sourdough recipes I've tried so far, our favorite is King Arthur Flour's Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread. It calls for 5 Cups of flour, but I'd eyeball it after 4.
• Make sure you make the slits in your dough DEEP before baking. My little loaves ended up splitting out the bottom because they had nowhere else to go! I wasn't too worried about the dough "deflating" when I cut into the loaves because Sourdough has such a robust rising process, but I do love how my scouring tool cuts through the dough like butter.
• I used a Banneton Proofing Basket to get the pretty little swirls on my round loaf. I still haven't perfected this technique, but I can tell you (from experience) that you want to flour it pretty heavily before adding your dough!
• And in case you're wondering, that's homemade raspberry jam, my recommended topping for your homemade sourdough. (We thought we'd have enough fresh raspberries from our bushes in the backyard to make this year's batch, but a little someone was perfectly content to eat them right off the bush as soon as they were ripe :)