Day 17 Whole Wheat Sourdough French Bread

My colleagues are all continuing to grow and maintain their own starters in parallel with our students. In her most recent blog post Jennifer describes making a batch of pancakes with maple syrup in the recipe.  I'd never thought about doing this--what a great idea! Karen's starter went on a field trip to Noisette Pastry Kitchen to collect some wild yeast and seems to be doing well.  We will take our students on a field trip to the same bakery tomorrow, and I plan to bring my starter along too to see if I can also collect some additional wild yeast.  It will be interesting to compare smells and appearances with other students and faculty.

In addition to field trips, the students in the course also have an opportunity to read and explore literature on bread from a wide variety of angles from readings that include very technical scientific writing such as an article about microbiota from De Vuyst et al. (2009) to excerpts from a poem about terroir written by Gary Paul Nabhan (2008).  In class we delve deeper into these topics with a variety of student engagements.  Our course is a collaboration between the Clark Honors College and faculty who are affiliated with the Science Literacy Program and Food Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon.  It is very exciting to have the opportunity to teach with this diverse and inspiring group of faculty and students where we are incorporating student-centered learning with an interdisciplinary perspective to the study bread.

Not only are the students growing a starter, but they are currently engaged in scientific experiments with their starters.  I'm looking forward to learning more about what experiments they're running and the results.  It's a great opportunopportunity for non-science majors to engage in a real kitchen science experiment with something that they will encounter in their everyday lives--bread.

Not only are we asking our students to experiment with their starter, they have the task of keeping it alive until the end of the term so that they can bake a loaf of bread with a group as their final course assignment.  We are looking for an easy to understand bread recipe that will work with sourdough and whole wheat bread.  There are several sourdough bread recipes like the one I baked last weekend that also include packaged yeast.  However, we'd like to try and find one that doesn't require the extra yeast.

I thought I'd try out a promising recipe from the Sunset Cook Book of Breads (1977) edited by Susan Warton and Kandace Esplund Reeves.  There's a whole section with sourdough bread recipes.  I'm looking forward to trying a few others as well. This bread recipe is adapted from a classic sourdough french bread recipe (pg 52).  The original recipe calls for double the amounts listed here to create two loaves and a sponge feeding time of 6-8 hours at 85 degrees F.  Mine sat on the counter at 67 degrees F for 10 hours instead.

Whole Wheat Sourdough French Bread

1/2 c sourdough starter at room temperature
1 c warm water
2 c soft white flour (from Lonesome Whistle Farm)
Mix ingredients together in a large bowl, cover with a cloth, and let it stand until bubbly.

1 t salt
1 t sugar
1 1/2 c Red Fife Wheat Flour (from Lonesome Whistle Farm) + 1/2 c for kneading
Mix to sponge and then turn out onto board to knead 10 minutes until smooth.

Put dough into a oiled bowl, cover and let stand for 2 1/2 hours.  I put the bowl into the oven with the temperature turned to 250 for 1 minute and then turned the heat off and left the oven light on.

I'm glad that I have photographic evidence that the dough did rise.  It was hard to tell, but the dough did have a much more airy texture after the first rise.

Whoops, I forgot to knead the dough a second time and just went to rolling it into an oblong shape. Seems forgiving though. Place dough on a baking sheet, cover again with a cloth and return it to a warm place to rise again for 60-90 minutes.  The instructions state to wait for it to be puffy and almost doubled--and there's complicated instructions about transferring to a piece of cardboard covered with cornmeal that I ignored.

After the next rise is finished. Put the oven racks in the lowest two places and preheat oven to 400F. Just before baking put a baking sheet into the lowest rack and pour in 1/4 inch of boiling water.

Heat cornstarch and water to boiling.  Cut three 1/2 inch slashes in the loaf of bread. Brush top and sides with cornstarch and water mixture.

Whoops.  I forgot to check the temperature of the oven before doing the last step!  50 more degrees to go before I can bake my bread. Put dough into the oven on the shelf.

Bake 400F for 10 min.  Brush evenly with cornstarch mixture again.  It smells like bread, and made the most amazing sizzling sound when I brushed it with the cornstarch mixture.

Bake 20-25 minutes until loaf is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

That is one sturdy loaf of bread!  The outside is crusty; the inside is soft. Both textures are delightful to eat.  It has a spectacular tangy sourdough flavor.  I'm rather in awe that my jar of sourdough on the counter has this taste!  It's a little dense, but not horrible right out of the oven.  I'll let it cool overnight and see how it tastes and cuts in the morning.

Total time start to finish after the sponge was ready 4 1/2 hours.