By Laura Rancie.
Looking forward to what felt like a much-needed Christmas break, I had one goal in mind – to make sourdough. I had heard rumours that it could be time-consuming and fiddly so what better chance than the holiday break, right? Wrong.
What ensued between Christmas Day and New Year's Day to anyone on the Gold Coast who had the great displeasure of living through it was nothing short of a destructive tornado, a 6-day power blackout, a heatwave for the decades and a 430mm rainfall event spanning 48 hours. As I said, it started on Christmas Day and ended on New Year’s Day. These conditions are not ideal for creating a sourdough starter.
This is the context that began my sourdough journey. In the leadup, I found what I thought was quite an active Facebook community, called Sourdough Bakers Australia which I delightedly joined and continues to be my go-to.
Left: My miserable sourdough starter fail. Right: What starter should actually look like. 2nd attempt.
I read some posts and made some mental notes but in the end decided on an Italian Chef’s sourdough recipe from a book I already owned.
The result after three or four agonising days of waiting, waiting, waiting was a mouldy, caramel-coloured starter. Never having done this before, I wondered if that was normal. After all, they talk about ‘natural yeast.’ Could this be what they meant?
I turned to my FB sourdough community and was met with support and a kind offer by a fellow Gold Coaster to ‘THROW THAT AWAY and let me give you some of my active starter.’ I excitedly agreed. That’s when all the catastrophic events occurred. Tamborine Mountain, where my starter lady lived, was hit the worst. I knew she would be in no position to share her starter now, let alone even make it down the mountain.
However, I was wrong – when it was safe to come out again, she not only reached out to me but drove halfway down to meet me for the drop off along with very specific instructions for the next day.
I took my starter home and named her Dolores. Given you quite literally must nurture and feed it every.single.day, it seemed fitting to give my new addition a name. Besides, I am quite sure Dolores is an actual family name on my Spanish side.
Then the mothering begins - ensure the room Dolores is in, is not too humid. Make sure it’s not too hot. Check times. Peek in. Check in. Adjust. Make plan A but then carry out plan B.
The next morning, I was ready to turn part of Dolores, into dough. Except I had forgotten all the instructions my starter dealer had given me. In frustration, I turned to the Sourdough Bakers Australia FB page for advice. Minutes later I got lots of supportive advice including a text from my sourdough dealer, who had seen my plea for help.
I decided to follow the group's ‘simple sourdough recipe’ located in the files section. What people fail to tell you about making sourdough is that you need to be unemployed so work doesn’t get in the way of turning a starter into dough into bread.
You need to have no children so no one can distract you, delay you, or nag you, during the 48 hours of making said bread. You need to have constant access to boiling water so that the second the gooey, sticky, drippy dough drops on the counter, the floor, your hand or any possible surface you can immediately melt it back down. (This is the only way the dough will come off, so you don’t end up with a concrete-like substance unresponsive to any method of human effort.)
This part of the process is called the shaggy dough. It's when you first mix the starter with the flour and water, then let it sit for several hours.
The part I love best, after 48 hours of folding, waiting, stretching, waiting, proofing, waiting, bulk fermenting, waiting, cold proving, waiting, using bannetons, hydrating, cutting and waiting…is when you pull your golden crumbed loaf out of the piping hot oven and are ready to feast – you need to wait an hour, or else, you’ll end up with a gummy dough. So just wait some more.
Despite my satirical review of my very first experience with sourdough, I have gone on to make several loaves, sourdough crumpets, sourdough pizza and sourdough bagels. Stay tuned as I share the journey with you in regular instalments and create our own AGFG sourdough community.
Do you have tips for me?
