Tuesday, February 8, 2011

30th Time’s a Charm: San Francisco Sourdough Bread

San Francisco Sourdough Bread: They key to a soft but nicely risen interior is to stop baking when the inside measures 200 degrees F.

Wheat sourdough pizza crust: use cornmeal on the pizza peel so that your topped pizza will slide off onto the heated pizza stone, easily.
Something worth having is something worth waiting for. In the past year, I’ve occupied hundreds of hours making recipes from scratch, looking for ways to use real ingredients in cooking to yield really delicious food. (My cooking does not always turn out, but c’est la vie!) Less prepackaged food means fewer fillers, additives, chemicals, and preservatives in our food. And, it’s very rewarding to learn which foods are in season, and how to prepare the fruits and vegetables that come fresh from the farm.  

If I can figure out how to cook fresh seasonal food, everybody can! Good cooking is mostly about doing justice to great ingredients, and enthusiasm for bringing together loved ones around the kitchen table.
In my kitchen, this winter has been the season of sourdough bread baking. With varying degrees of success, I’ve explored a variety of “expert” internet resources with recipes, tips and reviews from experienced bakers. While the flavor of my starter is well-developed and sour, for some reason my breads never rise as well as commercially baked San Francisco sourdough bread. I tried tips from various bloggers and foodies, including letting my bread rise in the oven, with the light on. No success. I took Alton Brown’s advice and used yeast in my sourdough. Better bread, but still too dense. Finally, last Sunday at church, the answer came to me from a friend. Holly had discovered the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and was making fabulously beautiful breads, just like the loaves I had been trying to bake for 9 months! 

With resolve to become a successful sourdough baker, I returned home and opened an artisan bread cookbook we received as a wedding gift: Artisan Breads Every Day. My first batch of San Francisco Sourdough was successful, as was the second batch. The wheat sourdough pizza dough was chewy, fluffy and delicious, too! Why had we endured the agony of half-baked recipes for nearly a year? (However, I suppose if I had successfully used Peter’s book I may never have invented the bread-proofing vent for our computer, which creates a perfect bread-rising environment for a bowl of dough sitting atop the computer tower.) Peter Reinhart explained key artisan bread making steps that internet recipes omitted entirely, and increased my understanding of the science behind bread making.
If only I had turned to this book, sooner. Free internet recipes are sometimes fabulous. But, often, excellent cooks reserve their best recipes and kitchen secrets for paying customers. Investing in these culinary gems is the quickest way to get reliable results! 

My favorite recipe repositories are epicurious.com and 101recipes.com. I also love to see what is going on in the online community homegrown.org. Where do you go for inspiration?

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