#naturalstarter

As promised, here’s our Potato Rosemary Bread -- a delicious way to use your White Starter from last Friday. 

This bread is really a meal unto itself. The potatoes, rosemary, and olive oil are a classic marriage, and the potatoes give the final bread a wonderful moistness. This is a long one, but we promise it’s worth it. Make, eat, enjoy! 

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 pounds Russet potatoes

1 cup water (68 degrees)

3/4 cup active White Starter (see recipe from Friday, April 3)

4 1/4 cups bread flour, plus extra flour for preparation 

2 tablespoons whole wheat flour

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh rosemary

1 tablespoon fine sea salt 

Yellow cornmeal, for preparation 

Yield: 2 loaves

Directions: 

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the potatoes on a baking tray, and bake under tender -- about 50-60 minutes. Cool completely, peel the skins, and discard. 

2. In the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer, combine the potatoes, water, and starter. With a dough hook attachment, mix at low speed until the potatoes are slightly broken up (about 2 minutes), then stop the mixer. Add the bread flour, whole wheat flour, oil, and rosemary. At low speed, mix until a firm, but moist, dough is formed (about 4 minutes). Sprinkle the salt over the dough and let rest for 15 minutes. 

3. At low speed, mix the salt into the dough for 2 minutes. Increase the speed to medium and kneed the dough for 8 minutes. Do a window-pane gluten development test. The dough should be smooth and elastic and pull away from the sides of the bowl, and the temperature of the dough should be 78 or 80 degrees. Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl or container at least twice its size, and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise in a cool, draft-free place until doubled in size (about 4-5 hours). 

4. Generously coat 2 cloth-lined proofing baskets with sifted flour, or line 2 medium open baskets with a towel and flour them. Set aside. 

5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces. Shape each into a round load. Turn each loaf seam-side up; transfer to the prepared baskets. Cover the baskets tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate to rise slowly overnight or up to 12 hours. 

6. Remove the loaves from the refrigerator; let come to room temperature (about 1 hour). 

7. Meanwhile, at least 20 minutes before baking, place a large baking stone on the center oven rack. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. 

8. Sprinkle a baker’s peel or the back of a baking sheet with cornmeal. Carefully invert 1 loaf onto the peel; remove the basket. With a lame or sharp knife, lightly score the surface of the loaf in a criss-cross pattern. If your stone is large enough to accommodate both loaves, invert the second loaf onto the peel and remove the basket; score the top. Generously spray the oven with water to create steam, and quickly slide the loaf or loaves onto the baking stone. Close the oven door, bake for 3 minutes. Open the oven door and spray all around the loaf. Close the oven door, bake for 3 minutes. Repeat (about 40 minutes baking time) until the loaf is dark brown and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Transfer the loaf to a wire rack and cool completely. 

You’re 6 days into our natural starter process -- congrats! A natural starter is the building block of any good bread recipe. Once you have initialized a natural culture, “The Chef” (see our previous post), it is important to keep it healthy and active. 

Now that we’ve completed the initial 6-day process to capture wild yeast, we must strengthen and sustain the starter. To do this, we will give it 3 refreshments -- see below for the directions. Some science behind this: the refreshments have a dual purpose. One, it replenishes the exhausted food supply for the wild yeast. Two, it keeps the acid/alkaline balance of the starter in check. 

First, we will use our chef to create a white starter. Next week, we’ll use the white starter to make a delicious, Potato Rosemary Bread. Check back here on Monday for the recipe (so you can make the bread while your starter is active), and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get Friday Favorite recipes each week! 

Let’s get started: 

Day One (First Refreshment)

3/4 cup ripe Chef (the remaining Chef can be stored in the refrigerator until it’s needed again)

1/2 cup water (68 degrees)

1/3 cup bread flour

In a large glass bowl, whisk together the chef and water until the chef dissolves and the mixture becomes wet and sticky. Whisk in the flour until the mixture becomes smooth. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the mixture ferment at room temperature for 6 hours or until bubbly. Then refrigerate the starter overnight or up to 14 hours. 

Day Two (Second Refreshment)

1 cup water (68 degrees)

3/4 cup bread flour

Check to see that the starter has doubled in size then collapsed slightly. Add the water and flour to the starter, whisk until smooth. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the mixture ferment at room temperature for 6 hours or until bubbly. Then refrigerate the starter overnight. 

Day Three (Third Refreshment)

2 cups water (74 degrees)

1 1/2 cups bread flour

Check to see that the starter has doubled in size then collapsed slightly. Add the water and flour to the starter, whisk until the flour is incorporated. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Then refrigerate the starter overnight. 

Day Four 

The starter is now ready to properly leaven the bread recipe of your choice! It should appear bubbly and slightly spongey and have a bright, sour aroma. Before using this active starter, let it come to room temperature (about 2 hours). After measuring the amount you’ll need for a recipe (3/4 cup for Potato Rosemary Bread), set aside 3/4 cup and discard the rest. Refrigerate the reserved 3/4 cup for up to 2 weeks, or freeze for up to 3 months. When it’s time to use again, refer to the above 3-step refreshment process. 

Introducing "Friday Favorites" -- our new weekly installment of Metro recipes sent right to your inbox. We know great bread starts with a great base, so today our first recipe will be for "The Chef". No need to make a grocery store run for commercial yeast, your beautiful natural starter will become the basis for the bread recipes you'll see (and try!) in the weeks to come.

“The Chef” Day One:

1 cup bread flour

1/2 cup water (72 degrees)

1 tablespoon organic apple juice

In a large glass bowl, combine the flour, water, and apple juice. Whisk vigorously to incorporate air into the mixture and to ensure that there are no lumps. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the mixture ferment at room temperature for three days. On the third day, the mixture (chef) should appear to be alive: bubbly and spongey. This indicates a successful capturing of the wild yeasts.

Day Three:

1 cup bread flour

1/2 cup water (68 degrees)

Skim off the dry surface of the chef and discard. Discard half the remaining chef. You should have approximately half of the chef left. Transfer the reserved chef to a clean bowl. Add the flour and water. Whisk vigorously until smooth. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the chef ferment at room temperature for one day.

Day Four:

1 cup bread flour

1/2 cup water (68 degrees)

Check to see that the chef has doubled in size and appears spongey. Repeat process as directed for day three.

Day Five:

1 cup bread flour

1/2 cup water (68 degrees)

Check to see that the chef has doubled in size and appears spongey. Repeat process as directed for day three.

Day Six: 

Check to see that the chef has doubled in size and appears spongey. By this point, you should have successfully captured and strengthened a culture of wild yeast. This "ripe" chef can be used to initialize our starters, which in turn may be used to leaven bread. 

Two months into this project, I started to read more about natural fermentation versus using a yeast to start. It seemed really complicated, especially because I don’t weigh ingredients and quite frankly, mass and volume confuse me as words. But I had a cool conversation with a chef friend and they recommended just letting a poolish keep going instead of making a loaf. So I accidentally did this one day and now I’m using that to get my dough going instead of adding yeast. Which resulted in my best poolish to date! 

It passed the ‘float test’ (dropped a bit in water and it floated), a test I’d never aced before. Also it looks disgusting.

I expected this to be the best loaf that had ever come out of my oven...but...it wasn’t. It was really wet and dense and didn’t end up rising as much as I’d expected. Also, that iteration never passed any of its future tests (broke when I stretched it for the windowpane test after the slap and fold, didn’t rise to double its mass). The poolish I made with my starter was too liquid-heavy, I guess. 

Still, I ate this bread all week and though really dense, it was tasty. What I’ve learned is to keep going through with each loaf, even -- possibly especially -- when it doesn’t feel right. Every week is an experiment and a chance for observation and the result has only once been so godawful that it went into the garbage can. Even badly baked bread is freshly baked bread and it doesn’t have to be the perfect loaf. It just has to be good enough/fine/finished. Because it’s the pursuit of this project that should be most enjoyable and most interesting. The product is just its completion.