Table of Contents

Breadmaking

Name: Vivian (Mellon) Snyder

Date and Time: 

2021.05.14, 6:00 [pm]

Location: Nuss, New York NY

Subject: Exploded Sourdough

Tragically, the sourdough starter that Pamela gave me exploded after I “fed” it last night. I had left the starter in a reused feta cheese container, which had a good amount of free space above the existing starter. I added two parts flour to one part sugar to the starter, with room to breathe with the container’s lid on top (not sealed, so that some air could get it), and according to a friend it had overflowed by the morning, before I woke up. I guess someone thought it was a container of runny, spoiled feta cheese and threw it away so they didn’t have to look at it. I was originally planning on making a more historically accurate sourdough, but now I won’t have time to make my own starter before we use the bread for molds on Tuesday. So I decided to use some of the yeast in my cabinet to make a more contemporary recipe.

I made this recipe pretty much from memory, with some guidance on temperature and general timelines from google. I started out by dissolving 3 tablespoons of sugar in about half a glass of warm water. The water should be “warm” as in, about as hot as you can comfortably hold your finger, but not lukewarm. I just remember my grandma telling me this as a guideline when activating yeast. Next, I added a packet of dry yeast (not instant yeast, which technically doesn’t work faster, it’s typically used to incorporate yeast straight into dry ingredients without a first activation in water). Stir gently until there’s no yeast floating on the top. After a few minutes, when the yeast produced a beer-like froth (see above), I was ready to incorporate the mixture into the dry ingredients.

My dry ingredients were just 3 mugs of flour and a few pinches of salt. I stirred these up before adding the yeast liquids.

After incorporating my dry and wet ingredients, the dough was flaky and not fully incorporated. I worked with the mixture with my hand (avoid using a whisk, like I did at first! The dough is too tough for the whisk to help at all, and once the dough starts to dry it is very very difficult to wash off of the small spaces in the whisk). After get the dough to look relatively smooth (see image above), I continued to kneed/massage/fold the dough until I could feel a rubbery resistance from the dough, which made me think that the gluten was starting to do its job.

My dough never became perfectly smooth, and after it started getting tougher and dryer (and more difficult to continue working with), I ran the dough under the faucet for a moment until the outside was coated with water, and kneaded one last time. I then rolled the dough into a large ball.

I placed the dough ball in a covered pot on the stove, and left it there until I saw a good amount of rise.

It took just short of an hour for the dough to rise significantly. I likely could have left it there longer, for a fluffier bread, but since this bread would be used to make molds I didn’t want very large air bubbles to form. So I went ahead and removed the dough from the pot at this point.

I shaped the dough into a “loaf” shape and coated it with a thin layer of flour. I placed some wax paper over the pan so that the loaf wouldn’t lose too much moisture during this proofing stage. I also went ahead and preheated the oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit.

After just half an hour of proofing, the dough expanded substantially, nearly reaching the edges of the pan. I cut an “x” into the top surface to help air escape during the final bake.

After baking the bread for 45 minutes, my loaf appeared to be done! According to various contemporary sources (found via google), the bread should sound hollow when knocked. Mine did not, and the texture of the finished product reflected that. It was chewy, dense, heavy bread. But I was happy with the golden color and thought it tasted great with some leftover homemade butter.