(Note* “Doh” comes from the popular animation “The Simpsons”. When Homer Simpson makes a mistake he says “Doh!”.)
I often enjoy writing about my baking successes on this blog so I thought I would share a recent failure too. Not everything can be a success, if you aren’t making mistakes then you aren’t trying hard enough. That can be said for language learning too!
I started making more sourdough bread this year which means I am not using any commercial shop-bought yeast, instead I made my own ‘starter’ using flour and water to create a kind of wild yeast. It is a simple fermentation process, just like making bread itself. I have had some great breads so far. Such as this...
However, it has also come with some difficulties.
Firstly, the amount of ‘starter’ you use in your bread affects the final taste of the bread. Sourdough bread gets its name from the slight sour taste of the wild yeast and the corresponding fermentation in the breadmaking process. Some people like a more sour taste, so using more ‘starter’ can help achieve that, but there’s a catch. Using more ‘starter’ also changes the texture of the bread making it a bit denser, gummier and with a chewier crust. Again, this can be nice but there are limits obviously, so you need to find the right balance for you.
Secondly, and definitely the most difficult part is the timing. Commercial yeast was developed to speed up the long process of breadmaking that had been around for about 6,000 years at that point. Commercial yeast has only been used since around 1900, think about that for a second, in its short history it has basically replaced wild yeast fermentation techniques. For most people, modern breadmaking still takes quite a long time. You’re looking at 3 hours minimum to make a loaf of bread. However using wild yeast increases this minimum time to about 8 hours, however most people will spread it out over 24 hours. The process is much the same, just the time is extended as the wild yeast is slower to activate.
Extending the breadmaking process is actually good for the final product. Think about where the flavour comes from in bread. If you eat raw flour, it’s not pleasant and has no taste. If you mix flour and water, you will now have a tasteless paste. Only time allows the sugars in the flour to be extracted during the fermentation process which turns your tasteless paste into delicious bread. So, by extending the time you can make more delicious bread, but judging each stage is a lot more difficult. Master bakers are just masters of fermentation.
Anyway, onto my ‘Sourdoh’. This means my baking failure...
I have had some great successes with my sourdough but a few weeks ago I had a real flop which brought me back to reality. Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing yet? There is another part to this story though. I had also bought some new flour that I had never used before which said it was weaker than normal bread flour. I thought that my excellent baking skills would help me to succeed with anything! Actually I like buying different flours all the time to see how they work and how they affect the whole process, so I thought this would be exactly the same as usual.
As I was making my dough, it looked great! It was smooth and kind of billowy like a marshmallow. It had a nice stretch and it felt strong. I was feeing rather confident with this particular batch. When it was time to shape my bread, I did struggle more than normal. It wasn’t quite holding its shape and felt much stickier than it looked, but I wasn’t worried.
When it was time to bake, this is where my real concerns started. After tipping my dough out of its basket just before I put it into the oven, it instantly started to spread out and lose its shape. This can happen if you leave the dough out for a few minutes, but it shouldn’t happen instantly. Again, I was optimistic. I thought once the heat of the oven hits the dough it will rise up gracefully into beautiful bread.
It didn’t.
It came out looking like a kind of UFO pancake thing. Almost no rise. My cuts didn’t open at all. And when I tapped the bottom expecting to hear a hollow sound, it was more of a thud. What a disappointment. Of course I still ate it. It was a bit chewy and dense, but it was still something unique that I can’t buy in the supermarkets.
The following weekend, I needed to get my revenge. I made almost the same bread but this time I used a bit less water and I was very conscious of my shaping technique. Trying to maximize tension while shaping should help my dough to hold its shape.
It was a success...of sorts.
It still wasn’t once of my best, but it was a huge improvement on the UFO from the week before. I am guessing that the flour I bought is not best suited for this type of bread so I won’t be buying it again, but I will still cherish the experience I had. I have been doing this for about a year now but I am still learning all the time, and even my ‘sourdoh’ bread tastes great. I am still search for that 'perfect loaf' however, perhaps one day I will be truly satisfied with one of my bakes.
