The Perfect Sourdough

One of the most tastiest and most photographed  breads out there is the sourdough. What's not to love about this tangy loaf that's perfect just with butter or as the base of a sandwich? Now home bakers are taking it on, trying to create the perfect bread. All you need is a  good starter and a lot of time.

Claire Saffritz, a contributing editor to Bon Appetit Magazine, wrote this interesting article, and how to for yesterday's New York Times Food section. Sourdough is one of the hardest and possible the most difficult of breads. As she states "It's not just flour, water and yeast but time and temperature too." Regular bread making, using an oven, is time consuming, but making sourdough is days consuming. Carve out three days for the whole process. She recommends starting on Friday for fresh from the oven loaves on Sunday. You're also going to need a lot of equipment, from a glass mixing bowl to an Instant read thermometer.Then there's the fancier stuff such as bannetons, bread proofing baskets. a serrated knife and a large Dutch oven. Unlike other breads , sourdough requires parchment paper too. Then there are the ingredients - a mature starter (get it online or from friends and family), white bread flour along with whole grain rye or spelt flour.Then there's rice flour for dusting. Luckily, Stop & Shop and WHole Foods carry the flours  - although you can buy all of them on line.

After all this , then there is the process. It's feeding or refreshing your starter on Day One, then letting it sit out at room temperature. A second feeding is needed once the starter doubles in size. Day Two requires mixing the dough and letting it rest, otherwise known as the autolyse process.  This will take anywhere from thirty minutes to a couple of hours. The next step is the floater test. Drop a small spoonful into a bowl of room temperature water.It's ready when it floats (along with a dome of sudsy bubbles appearing on the starter's surface. If it sinks, let it sit for another thirty minutes. If it's ready then combine the dough and starter. Use your one hand to mix the dough while the other rotates the bowl. assess the dough and then add salt. It's then mixing and performing what's known as the windowpane test in which some of the dough is stretched and rolled out. It should be membrane thin with light shining through it. Then there's  more prep, folding and pre-shaping the dough.  The shaping baskets are then prepared with a dusting of white and rice flours combined. The sourdough is then proofed, first outside the fridge and then inside it overnight. Day Three is the actual baking day It's baking it in a Dutch oven at a fiery 500 degrees F. Prepping the dough requires dusting it with flour and gashing it with a knife or razor blade. Halfway through the temp is dropped to 450 F. The result is a crusty, tasty loaf with a tender crumb.

Perfection takes a lot of work. Creating a flawless work is not just a lot of work but time. If you have it, do it. Make  that Instagrammable loaf of bread.