My newest obsession is sourdough bread.
It has only three ingredients—flour, water and wild yeast (a crucial fourth ingredient being time). What’s exciting is that with just these three ingredients, the results can be wildly different, based on technique, quality of flour, and temperature. Every baker has an ideal loaf that he/ she is chasing, and for me, it’s a crisp crust, lightly aerated and shiny interior, and a faintly sour flavour.
Bit by bit
Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson is what got me hooked on sourdough bread-making many years ago. I must admit its instructions are rather verbose, which scared me off initially. Each time I took the courage to open it up, I’d start reading the method and just put the book away. It didn’t help that I was living in France and skipping downstairs to the local boulangeries was a lot easier than executing 20 pages of instructions.
Then the move to London happened, and the thought of consuming white sliced bread petrified me. I was scared I’d never eat bread made with heritage grains and chestnut flour, or buttery loaves dotted with walnuts.
With the book sitting on my kitchen table, I created my starter, fed it like a pet, baked numerous loaves, and tracked all my observations and tribulations on a little bread blog I created, to document the process as well as my many visits to the bakeries in Paris (http://theperfectloaf.tumblr.com/).
My first loaves, although edible, were dense and nothing like the loaves of Paris I kept comparing them with. To remedy that, I got myself Parisian baker Eric Kayser’s Larousse Bread .
The step-by-step photography is reassuring, with a wide spectrum of breads covered in the book. The instructions are to the point, which works well for those who want to make breads without being distracted by lengthy narratives. Kayser does use a tiny quantity of yeast to lift the bread and shorten fermentation time, and yet retain flavour and texture.
With each loaf, I continued working on my technique, researching methods by learning from some of the best sourdough bakeries in London and making friends with bakers in Paris. But even when I finally achieved something noteworthy, the obsession to keep getting better never ceases. To feed this obsession, I devour books on the subject by authors from around the globe, each week tinkering with my techniques slightly.
A long journey
Sourdough bread takes time and a fair amount of understanding before one can begin mixing ingredients together. Although the inputs are straightforward, the series of stages in the sourdough’s life involves meticulous care.
At present I’m reading Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forkish to revise my technique and learn another baker’s perspective. Another bread book on my shelf worth a mention is Tartine Bread No. 3 . It is based on the same techniques as the previous book by Robertson, but pays more attention to exploring ancient wheat and alternative grains in an attempt to blend and layer flavours instead of using only a single variety of grain.
It may not be suited to Indian baking because it’s hard to find all the varieties of flours in the market, but nonetheless it’s a lesson in pushing beyond the norm.
Get any of these books and read them over a few times before you bring out the flour. Use scales. Learn the science. And most importantly—stay obsessed!
The writer is a London-based chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu Paris and Alain Ducasse Education. @purplefoodie
