Goth Panda

People, can we discuss the intro to this bread? As a vegetarian, I was kind of grossed out by PR’s loving descriptions of his childhood deli sandwiches. I don’t think I needed to know that chicken fat can be used as a sandwich spread. Rob (who also grew up in Philly) remembers the Chuckwagon PR references on City Line Avenue, but I have never been to any of the three places he mentions.

I love rye bread, so I was looking forward to this one. I made the starter, and I definitely did not forget to add the onions.

The next day, I combined the dry ingredients. I did not forget the caraway seeds, either.

Then for the mixing and kneading:

You are not supposed to knead rye bread for too long since it has a different kind of gluten than white bread does. However, this dough was wet, and I kept having to add more flour. I think the dough turned out stickier than I would have liked, but I was afraid to continue kneading it in order to add more flour. I popped it in my bucket to rise.

Which it did with no problems. I decided I wanted these to be sandwich loaves, partially because I was looking forward to having onion rye sandwiches, and partially because it would give my soft dough more structure.

I realize I don’t have a crumb shot! You can believe me when I say the inside was as yummy as the outside.

When I was growing up, a common party appetizer was a hollowed-out boule of rye or pumpernickel filled with an onion dip, and the scooped out middle was cut into squares of bread to dip. Eventually the entire bread bowl was torn apart and dipped, too. This is exactly what this bread tasted like. There was the sweetness of the onions, the tang of the rye and the caraway, and the sour of the sourdough all mixed together. We ate these slices by themselves, and the only problem I had with this bread is that I couldn’t come up with a sandwich that would complement the strong flavors. I think maybe PR is right that it would take roast beef or corned beef — or even chicken fat — to stand up to it. And as a vegetarian, I don’t have those options. I still have one and a half loaves of this in my freezer waiting for me to come up with a good use for it. I give this bread 4 stars.

I can’t believe I have finally made it to the Sourdough portion of the book. To tell you the truth, I was a little apprehensive, since I don’t have the best track record when it comes to sourdough.

I did not make my starter from scratch, since I already have a starter. I purchased some of the King Arthur Flour sourdough starter, and even the official KAF sourdough crock, many moons ago. But I did not get in the habit of baking with it regularly…or even feeding it regularly. Some time later, I got Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book The Bread Bible, and in it she describes how to turn a liquid starter to a stiff starter (and back again). I had been keeping my starter as a liquid starter, but the advantage of a stiff starter is that you don’t need to feed it as often. So I followed her directions and made my liquid starter a stiff starter.

And then I mostly forgot about it. But it continued to live on in the back of my refrigerator. Those people who say it is tough to spoil or kill a sourdough starter aren’t kidding.

Now, the Bread Baker’s Apprentice uses a liquid starter for the sourdough recipes, so I planned to turn my starter back to a liquid.

Here’s my stiff starter:

It doesn’t look too bad, right? Trust me, it has looked a lot worse.

I added flour and extra water to feed it and to get it to a liquid state, meaning approximately equal weights of flour and water.

I fed it a few times during the week, to help it get its strength back. Soon it was nice and bubbly.

Then I needed to use the liquid starter to make a stiff starter that would become my sourdough bread. So I took a stiff starter, made it a liquid starter…and then made that a stiff starter again. Does that make sense?

I accidentally left the stiff starter out way too long, and it got seriously puffy.

The stiff starter then gets refrigerated overnight, and the next day, flour, water, and salt are added. That’s it.

I let the dough rise until it had doubled.

Then divided and shaped. I decided to make boules. One boule got the banneton and the couche.

The other one had to make do with the dish towel and Pyrex bowl.

These rose well, too. I don’t remember how long they took to rise at each of the stages (because, surprise, surprise, I baked them a few weeks ago), but I feel like they were at the high end of PR’s estimates. For this whole sourdough section, I have been taking the schedule easy and waiting to make sure the dough gets doubled, since I am depending on my wild yeast. I haven’t really been experimenting with the whole no-knead bread phenomenon, but the one thing I have learned from reading about it is that time can do the work for you. So I am trying to be patient and let my wild yeast do its work.

I baked them with all the “hearth baking” rules observed. They turned out really tall and almost completely spherical, which I wasn’t expecting.

Look at that slash! I am proud.

These loaves were delicious. I love sourdough bread. I don’t know if it’s the recipe in particular, or just that my sourdough has been dormant for so long, but they had a really nice tangy, sour flavor without it being too overpowering. The texture was good, too. If you have a starter already, the recipe really wasn’t that complicated. It certainly is a long way away from my earlier, sad attempt. I’m going to give these 4.5 stars.