Make Mine Sourdough Recipes: by Dennis Fisher and Joe Fisher
Last year the Belfast Farmers'Market participated in a grant program sponsored by the Maine Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources. This agricultural development grant, matched by in-kind funding from the market, paid for a direct mail advertising campaign, which many of you may remember from this summer and fall. We did this to improve our visibility in the community, and I think that we succeeded well in this goal. As president of the market, I'd like to thank all of our customers who answered our survey questions and returned our mailings.
I think it is a very positive thing that the state has taken an interest in the progress of our small farms. It is also very true that local farming in Maine needs the continuing support of our communities to prosper.
Secrets of Sourdough My idea of a good winter meal is a thick slice of sourdough bread and a bowl of soup. In this season, when the ground lies under a coat of protective snow and chores are fewer, many of us farmers suddenly find we have time to bake. I try to make bread once a week through the year, and I find that four loaves will usually carry us through until the next baking day.
Sourdough baking is not difficult to master. It takes a little longer than baking with yeast, and you have to deal with the starter. Sourdough starter is a living culture of yeast. Some famous cultures are a hundred or more years old. Mine is only a few years old, and I made it originally from packaged yeast. As it has aged it has matured and grown more interesting. Sometimes it is strong and pungent, sometimes weak and barely sour. This is one of the challenges of baking sourdough bread- it rarely comes out the same twice, but it is always worth making.
One of the perks of bread making is that you get to collect all kinds of interesting artifacts for your kitchen. I have a number of hand carved spoons and dough scrapers, some handed down and some my friend John Spinney. I have some yellowware bowls that I occasionally use, and my kneading board is a big slab of marble that used to be part of a wall. I also I own a bread machine: in fact I own two. They are both hundred year old Universal #4's- essentially a big dough hook in a bucket with a hand crank. You put your ingredients in the bucket and turn the handle for three minutes, and then let the dough rise. No kneading is necessary, and cleanup is very simple. You can find these at auctions and antique shops, and similar new bread makers can be found in the Cumberland General Store catalog.
Stir together two cups of lukewarm water, two cups of unbleached flour, 1 tablespoon of honey, and 1 packet of yeast. Let stand in a warm place in a covered glass or ceramic bowl. After a couple of days you will notice a sour smell. The longer you leave the starter before using, the more sour it will be- but if it turns a pinkish color and the smell seems more rancid than sour, throw it out and try again. The starter can be stored in a covered vessel (not metal, plastic is okay) in a cool room pretty much indefinitely. Make sure it doesn't dry out. I usually keep my starter in the refrigerator, where it will store well without feeding for months. A few days before baking, I take it out, let is "wake up" to room temperature, and feed it with more water, flour, and sometimes a little honey. Rye flour with give the starter a nice tang. A day or so after feeding you can use it. Look for air bubbles and a clean sour smell to indicate that the starter is alive and healthy.
I had a suggestion from a homebrewing friend of mine in Canada that teff flour (check the Co-op) can be mixed with water and allowed to stand to make a very fine starter. I haven't tried this yet but I intend to soon.
Recipe:
Here's a simple "San Francisco style" sourdough bread recipe that doesn't take all day. The night before you want to bake mix two cups starter with two cups water, one tablespoon salt, and enough unbleached whit flour to make dough. Knead a few minutes and then let rise in a covered oiled bowl overnight. Punch down, form into four loaves, allow to rise until doubled in bulk, and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. The bread is done when the bottom thumps hollow and the internal temperature is around 200 degrees.
You can easily substitute some whole wheat flour for part of the white if you like wheat bread. This bread has good but not too strong sourness, it would probably be stronger if I didn't refrigerate the starter. You can also add a tablespoon of dry yeast if you want to speed up the process, the dough will then rise in a few hours but the sourness will be much milder.
The Belfast Farmer's Market will reopen for the summer in May at our Reny's Plaza location.