My first sourdough bread


This week I baked my first bread. It’s a special type of bread, called sourdough bread. It’s made from no industrial yeast, but from sourdough starter. Sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that has been left for some time on the counter and on warm, preferably more than 22 °C. During that time yeast and good bacteria from the air start fermenting the mixture (consuming the sugar and to a degree, breaking gluten), causing it to rise due to bubbles from CO2, produced during fermentation. When preparing the dough for this type of bread, it has to rise for longer period of time than usual.

I’m quite happy with the outcome. Starter I used to make a leaven was well made, the dough has risen sufficiently, but there is a room for improvement when it comes to shaping the dough after initial rise (also called bulk fermentation which I enjoyed very much though). It come out from the oven very misshapen – one loaf even broke apart because of using too much flour.

I’m definitely not disappointed because I’m allowing myself to make mistakes and making “shitty first drafts“. No doubt practice and experience will improve the process of making the bread. Because it tasted good and cannot wait to bake new bread, I’ve decided to equip myself with missing utensils from making a bread ASAP (namely bench scraper, baker’s lame, a bowel to store dough for final rise and which also gives actual shape to baked bread).

If you want to make your own sourdough bread, check out the following posts which I’ve been using as a reference while making it (or buy this book both resources are based on).

  • The Perfect Loaf
  • Phickle (first post in a series about making sourdough bread, more of them are linked at the bottom of the article)