Adventures in German Sourdough

I tried this recipe from Enta's Bakery because I was fascinated with the idea of adding polenta to my bread. I didn't have spelt flour as the recipe originally calls for so I subbed in whole wheat flour.

Levain:

1 Tbsp sourdough starter

100 g room temperature water

50 g whole wheat flour

50 g rye flour

Dissolve the starter in the water, add flours and mix until incorporated. Cover and let sit for 8 hours.

Dough:

350 g + 25 g Water (80℉)

100 g Levain

400 g All-purpose flour

100 g Whole wheat flour

11 g Salt

Polenta:

1/4 cup Black sesame seeds 

1/2 cup Coarse ground polenta

1 cup Water

1.5 Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbsp freshly chopped rosemary

Bring water to a boil over medium high heat, add the coarsely ground polenta, remove from the heat, and let it cool. Once it has cooled, add extra virgin olive oil, chopped rosemary, and sesame seeds. Stir and encorporate as best you can; the polenta was a little lumpy for me.

In a large bowl add water and levain. Stir to mix, then stir in flours. Mix until you have a shaggy mass and autolyse 40 minutes.

Add the remaining 25 grams of water, and the salt. Squeeze salt into dough using your fingers. Add polenta mixture, mix well and then fold the dough on to it self. Cover and perform 4 turns over a total of two hours. After folding let rest for 15 minutes, then place in fridge for 2 hours.. 

Turn out dough onto a floured countertop, shape into a light boule and rest 15 minutes, covered with a bowl. Shape into a tight boule and place in a flour-lined toweled bowl. Cover with towel ends and put in fridge for 8-16 hours.

One hour before you plan to bake, preheat oven to 250C. Place boule onto a paper lined baking sheet, turn oven down to 240C and bake for 25 minutes, putting a cup of water into a metal container at the bottom of your oven (or steam it in a cooker!).

I'd been craving pizza the past week so I decided to give a sourdough pizza crust a whirl. I have Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast book which includes several variations on pizza dough. I used his "Overnight Pizza Dough With Levain" recipe as a guide, but did some things differently due to time constraints.

With the pie above I made the sauce with Mutti brand diced tomatoes which are imported from Italy and 2-3 times more expensive than the super discount off-brand ones you can get here in Germany (or in the US, for that matter). Forkish waxes philosophic about getting fancy Italian tomatoes because they have a lower acidity content that is perfect for pizza, and I have to admit he's probably right. Besides, my amateur chef Schweigervater (father in law) buys that brand, so I figured it must be good! I'm glad I bought it, the sauce was perfect and not sour or acidic at all.

For the Levain:

20g Active sourdough starter (approx 1 Tbsp)

80g White flour

20g Whole wheat flour

80g water

Dissolve the starter in the water, then mix in the flours. Stir until fully incorporated, then cover and let stand for 8-12 hours.

For the Dough:

360g White flour

248g Warm water (not too cold, not too hot, test it on your skin)

8g Farty salt, without iodine

Dissolve the levain in the water, then add the flour. Stir until fully incorporated and cover. Autolyze for 30 minutes. Add the salt and squish through with your hands. The dough will be sticky, in fact it will seem too sticky. This is ok. You can wet your hand to avoid it sticking to your hand too much.

Let the dough sit for 2 hours, performing 3 folds every 60 minutes. The dough will be less sticky each time, and will stretch further each time. After the folding, pop the dough in the fridge for 2 hours with the bowl covered with a cloth to help prevent drying out.

After 2 hours, remove the dough and turn it out onto a floured surface. Divide into two equal pieces (you can be anal and weigh it, or just eyeball it). Shape these balls into rounds, put them on a plate or baking tray, dust the tops with flour to prevent sticking and cover with a cloth. If you want to make the pizza that night, leave it out to rise for 2 hours. If you want to make pizza the next day, pop it straight in the fridge for up to 20 hours.

30 minutes prior to when you want to cook your pizza, put the dough in the fridge. This will make it easier to handle. At the same time, preheat your oven to 260C. Make sure your baking tray or pizza stone is in there while the oven is preheated. Prep your sauce and ingredients.

For the sauce I used one 400g can of Mutti pulp tomatoes and stirred in 6 small diced garlic cloves with some dried oregano, a teaspoon of salt and a splash of olive oil. I also cut up one fresh mozzarella ball and shaved off some Grana Podano hard cheese to add to the cheesy fun.

When your oven is preheated, bring the dough out of the fridge and turn back out onto your floured workspace. Press it out with your fists into a rough circle or square. Leave about 1 inch of thicker crust at the edge. My dough was really stretchy, so I couldn't picky it up and stretch it out as described in the book. Just do the best you can.

I don't have a pizza stone, so I just put my dough on a sheet of baking paper and added my ingredients. I then slid the pizza onto my baking tray, which was about 8" from the top heater in the oven. If you have a pizza stone and a wooden peel, put some flour or polenta on the peel and add your dough. It should slide easily on the peel so you can slip it onto you stone.

When I baked my first loaf of sourdough a few weeks ago, I wanted to start with a simple, white bread recipe that wasn't too fancy. I looked at Susan's Norwich Sourdough over on Wild Yeast Blog but it didn't have instructions for the levain so I tucked it away for later. Now that I have a few loaves under my belt, I decided to return to it and give it a whirl. Besides, I come from Vermont originally and have been to Norwich many times (alas, as a kid for swim meets, so I have never visited the King Arthur Flour Mothership).

Susan's recipe yields 4-5 loaves which is just too much for 2 people in a small European apartment, so I have cut it into thirds here.

For the Levain:

1 Tbsp starter (I used Rygel, my rye starter)

60g Water

60g Rye flour

Dissolve the starter in water, add flour and mix. Cover and let sit for 8-12 hours.

For the Dough:

300g White flour

40g Rye flour

200g Water

8g Salt (preferably the farty non-iodized kind)

Mix everything together with the exception of the salt in a bowl until all ingredients are incorporated. Cover and let autolyze for 30 minutes. Add salt and squish through with your hands until incorporated.

Let rest for 30 minutes, covered with a towel, and then perform a series of turns. You will do 4 turns every 30 minutes over a total of 2 hours. It helps if you lightly oil your hands otherwise you will get dough all over the place--it will be really sticky. When finished, let dough rest for 15 minutes, then put it in the fridge (covered) for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured workspace and shape casually into a round. Let rest for 15 minutes, covered with a bowl.

Then shape into a boule and place in a linen-lined, flour-dusted bowl, colander, proofing basket or what have you. The part of the boule you twisted should be facing up. Refrigerate for 8-20 hours.

30 minutes before you want to bake, preheat your oven to 245C. When the oven is ready, remove dough from the fridge and turn over onto a piece of baking paper. Slice dough using a razor, keeping it perpendicular to the counter. Carefully shift the dough onto your baking tray or container. Dump a cup of water into the bottom tray of your oven if you don't have a container for steaming. Close the door quickly and turn oven down to 230C.

For my third loaf I wanted to try Francis-Olive's Arrogant Bastard recipe as this weekend is St. Patrick's Day. We are going to visit a friend in the Netherlands and in Germany it is traditional to bring bread and salt as a housewarming present. What could be better than a beery bread?

For the beer I used Erdinger Dunkel, a dark German beer. It came in a half-liter bottle at my local grocery store, which worked out to be the perfect amount called for in the recipe.

For my second loaf I decided to try Francis-Olive’s City Bread recipe. My boyfriend, being a good German, loves hearty, dark breads that can double as doorstops. His ears perked right up when he heard, “whole-wheat flour.” I followed the 2nd recipe on the Tartine Experiment City Bread page.

For the Levain:

1 Tbsp of rye starter

50g water

50g rye flour

Mix ingredients until combined, cover and let sit for 8-12 hours.

For the Dough:

350g all purpose flour

150g whole wheat flour

400g h20

100g rye levain

10g salt

Dissolve the levain in 375g of water, then stir in the flours until the whole thing is a shaggy mass. Cover and autolyze for 1.5 hours.

After the autolyse, stir in the 10g of salt and the 25g of leftover water. Squish through with your hand until all of the water and salt is incorporated, and the dough is a smooth mass. Let it rest for 30 minutes in the bowl.

After 30 minutes rest perform four series of turns every 30 minutes.

The dough has now been fermenting for two hours total. Let it rest for 15 minutes at room temperature. Then let it ferment in the fridge for 2 more hours, covered.

After the fridge ferment, turn the dough out onto a floured workspace and shape into a loose round. Cover with a bowl and let rest for 15 minutes.

Shape into a boule and put it in a linen lined, flour dusted bowl. Leave in fridge for at least 8 hours, preferably 12-20 hours.

Preheat oven to 250C for at least 30 minutes with your baking device inside. When the oven is ready, remove dough, turn out onto a piece of backing paper, score, and pop it onto your baking tray. Steam for 30 minutes at 245C.

Turn down oven to 230C and bake until internal temp reaches 95-100C. Let cool for at least 1.5 hours.