May 9, 2020
To an outsider that crock filled with bubbling beige gunk on my kitchen counter may look like something waiting to be thrown out. To me it is a new passion, the thing that gently burbles in the back of my mind day and night as I imagine all that I might make with it–pancakes, artisanal bread, fritters. It gives new shape to my day, like a low maintenance pet, delivering far more in return for the modest attentions I need pay to its feeding schedule, health and vitality. It is sourdough, and I confess, I find it thrilling!
First it’s got history, something everyone assures we have far too little of in Southern California. Sourdough has been around since the dawn of civilization. Some say it may have launched the darn thing. Homo sapiens were starting to settle down and grow crops, wheat amongst their primary pursuits. When the seeds were ground and mixed with water into a paste, then left too long on a warm rock, it started to expand and leavened bread was born. Of course our ancestors didn’t know what was going on, they just liked the tangy taste and the loft it gave to the bread that before sourdough’s discovery only came in one height—flat, and flavor–dull. Today science can explain it all, even if I can’t, and it goes something like this: the water and ground wheat become a medium for the wild yeast naturally congregating in the air and, along with their bacterial neighbors, they come to dine on the wheat’s gluten, turning it into gas (yes, yeast flatulence, if you must) and sugars. Baking hardens the bread’s surface, capturing the gas as it tries to escape the dough, giving loft to one of life’s great pleasures: a fresh baked loaf of sourdough bread. 
I was gifted with my first quarter cup of sourdough starter from Pasadena’s Kristin Ferguson Smith, a pastry chef at Silverlake’s Forage. I had enjoyed one of her backyard, wood-burning oven pizza making classes, where we used sourdough to leaven the crusts. According to her instructions, I fed the starter daily, stirring in equal amounts of flour and warm water. Much to my amazement, it continued to grow and even thrive. I felt like a kid with a packet of comic book bought Sea-Monkeys. Bubbling beautifully of its own volition, I began to think of it fondly as my countertop garden crop.
I had been gluten phobic, though not certifiably celiac, for a few years, then I learned of sourdough’s diminishing gluten effect. According to Michael Pollan’sCooked: A Natural History of Transformation, sourdough fermentation “partially breaks down gluten, making it easier to digest…destroying at least some of the peptides thought to be responsible for gluten intolerance. Some researchers attribute the increase in gluten intolerance and celiac disease to the fact that modern breads no longer receive a lengthy fermentation.”
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the beloved local sourdough felt like a guilty pleasure as we boomer babies were assured that Wonder Bread was what we should be eating to help “build strong bodies 12 ways.” Glad to finally learn how good those tangy, chewy, crusty loaves actually were, I was happy to get back to them. Suddenly, wherever I went, it seemed sourdough, like the yeasts that enliven it, was in the air. I was having conversations in unlikely places with both professional and hobby bakers who swelled with pride regarding their starter and loaves. Along with the history, I was discovering the science, art, craft and philosophy of sourdough. Meanwhile, as my starter piled up, I began looking for ways to use it.
An Internet sourdough forum featured a simple pancake recipe that used two cups of starter for every batch. I rarely made pancakes at home because most recipes called for milk, which I don’t keep on hand. This required only starter, a couple of eggs for added protein and some olive oil, salt, and baking soda. The resulting pancakes were light and versatile, lending themselves to both sweet (syrup, jam, fruit) and savory (smoked salmon, sour cream, chives) treatments.
My first bread-baking foray was another Internet find, a three step, no knead loaf that required more time than anything else to produce. I also liked that it baked the bread quickly, in a 450-degree inferno, in a covered, cast iron Dutch oven for increased heat intensity. The resulting crusty loaf was satisfying and tasty, if not exactly something to generate bread lines around the block like Chad Robertson’s bread at San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery. His complicated, time and starter consuming recipe, is the Mount Everest of sourdough bread baking.
Robertson’s recipe has generated its own community of competitive bakers who post Facebook photos of “crumb shots,” bragging on the size of holes they’ve achieved in their loaves, and Pollan spends considerable pages chronicling his own efforts at mastering it in the “Air” section devoted to sourdough in Cooked. But of even greater interest to me are Pollan’s claims for the benefits of whole wheat. He argues that the industrial revolution’s invention of the roller mill, which replaced the stone mill and allowed producers to strip out the germ and bran from wheat to make white flour, has contributed to an American epidemic of diet related diseases and obesity.
Along with this new awareness of the health benefits of whole wheat, I began to discover a movement toward locally grown grain and small batch milled whole grain flours. In Southern California Kenter Canyon Farms sells flours they’ve milled from their California grown grain, as well as bread baked from it, at the Santa Monica and Hollywood Farmers’ Markets. Pasadena now has Grist & Toll: An Urban Flour Mill selling its own stone ground artisanal flours sourced both locally and from out of state. I’ve used both Kenter’s Red Fife wheat, a revival of a 19thcentury Canadian variety of winter wheat, and Grist & Tolls Triple IV, a modern variety, in my starter and subsequent baking efforts. Both were a revelation. The starter immediately smelled sweeter and more appealing than the soiled socks smell sometimes produced by industrial flours. Supermarket all purpose white flour seemed inert in comparison to the heavy, rich, speckled tan presence of Red Fife and Triple IV.
Grist & Toll owner/founder Nan Koehler felt flour was a natural extension of the current farm to table movement. “Grains were missing from the conversation,” Koehler says.
Koehler, a native of Missouri with a degree in business from the University of Kansas, worked in the international wine industry before taking baking classes and becoming a professional baker. She began selling cookies at the Studio City Farmers’ Market, then was hired to bake by Sherman Oaks Sweet Butter, where she began experimenting with such different flours as whole wheat, rye, corn and spelt. It was while watching an episode of Ruth Reichl’s PBS series Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, that she saw her future. “It was the episode on baking,” Koehler says. “Ruth was in England out in the country and went with the baker to talk to the local miller about what to bake with. As a baker, I thought how great would that be, to go to the miller and talk about what you wanted to do and what best to do it with? The more I began to meet people, make Internet searches and phone calls, it became obvious it might be doable.”
Koehler’s silent partner in the business is television writer Marti Noxon, best known for her work as writer and show runner on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whom she met accidentally in Paris while they both waited in line for several of the same restaurants. She’s met such kindred spirits ever since she embarked on the milling adventure and has been “basically blown away” by the community of bakers who’ve flocked to her mill and South Arroyo Parkway store front since opening in 2012. “Bread bakers love to share and talk about bread, their success, their failures and ask their questions.” Koehler holds community bakes at her facility, tapping into the 1000 plus members of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, a social media meet up group, with 50 to 100 people arriving each time, from the onset, with their final proofed loaves to bake and share. Koehler also holds baking and cooking workshops using her flours and featured grains like farro with Joseph Shuldiner of Los Angeles’ Institute of Domestic Technology.
The communal bakes have become so popular that Koehler now must take reservations for oven slots. The next big bake will be the Sunday before Thanksgiving, November 23, and all loaves produced that day will be donated to charity.
“I never imagined it would be this natural a community,” Koehler says. “People really engage with each other. It’s so refreshing. I can’t believe this happened in Los Angeles.”
For non bakers, Koehler’s flours can be enjoyed at the restaurants and bakeries she sells wholesale to, such as Pasadena’s Union restaurant (“He dictated my polenta grind and everyone who tastes it goes bananas,” she says) along with Silverlake’s Alimento, West Los Angeles’ high end pizza palace Sotto, Hollywood’s Sqirl, Fairfax’s Sycamore Kitchen, and Atwater Village’s Proof Bakery.
But for anyone who’d like to embark on their own sourdough adventure, the following recipes can help get you started.
Sourdough Starter (adapted from practical-stewardship.com)
In a glass bowl, clean jar or crock, mix ¼ cup all-purpose flour or a blend of all purpose and whole wheat flour with ¼ cup filtered (to remove chlorine) water. Cover with cheesecloth and leave on kitchen countertop 24 hours. Stir in or pour off any liquid that has risen to the top and then feed starter with another ¼ flour and ¼ cup water. Repeat this process for 7 days. You may see bubbles as soon as 3 days and the starter should have a sour smell. If you aren’t using it right away, put starter in the refrigerator with a lid and feed once a week (being sure to leave it on the countertop to come to room temperature and let the yeasts feed for a few hours on the wheat before putting it back in the fridge.)
Sourdough Pancakes
Whisk 2 cups room temperature sourdough starter in a large bowl with 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons sugar, 4 tablespoons olive oil, ½ teaspoon salt. In a separate small bowl mix 1 teaspoon baking soda with 1 tablespoon warm water. Gently fold this into the batter just as you’re ready to cook the pancakes and let sit for a minute as it gives rise to the batter. Cook pancakes, ¼ to ½ cup batter at a time, in buttered fry pan or skillet, on medium heat, for 1-2 minutes on each side, turning when edges are dry and center is bubbling. Keep stack warm in low oven until all pancakes cooked and serve with preferred toppings.
No Knead Sourdough Bread (approximately 1 ½ pound loaf)
Adapted from Mark Bittman’s No Knead Bread recipe from The New York Times and Sourdoughs International’s (www.sourdo.com) version incorporating sourdough into Bittman’s recipe.
Scheduling is important in making these long rise sourdough breads. I estimate 22 hours before I will be able to pop my bread into the oven, to begin my first step, the culture proof. So, if I can bake the bread for an hour in the oven at noon, I start the entire process at 2 p.m. the previous day. This is a weekend project if you spend your weekdays in an office, starting on Saturday for baking on Sunday. If you work at home, you’re free to fit the steps into any approximately 24-hour span.
Ingredients
For the Culture Proof:
1 cup active sourdough culture (see directions for making sourdough starter)
1 cup flour (146 grams of bread flour or all purpose flour—I used Grist & Toll’s Triple IV flour for this step and a 50/50 combination of that and Von’s organic unbleached all purpose flour for the rest of the recipe).
1 cup filtered water
Ingredients for the Bread:
1 cup culture from step one, the culture proof
3 cups (440 grams, see above regarding), plus more for dusting
1 cup filtered water
1 ½ teaspoon salt
Step One: The Culture Proof: Take 1 cup of active sourdough starter from what you’ve begun days or weeks before (see directions for making sourdough starter) and mix in a bowl with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water. It will be the consistency of a thick pancake batter. Cover bowl with clean kitchen towel and let rest for 6-8 hours at room temperature (65-85 degrees). The warmer the temperature, the sourer the culture will be.
(Note: this step will make approximately 2 cups of sourdough culture, allowing you to make two loaves of bread if desired. Otherwise you can throw the excess away, or return it to the original sourdough supply.)
Step Two: The Dough Proof: In alarge bowl, briefly mix 3 cups (440 grams) of flour, 1 cup of culture from the culture proof step, 1 cup water and 1 ½ tsp. salt, for a shaggy, firm dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap to proof 10-12 hours (overnight) at room temperature (65-80 degrees).
Ease the dough, which will be very sticky, onto a lightly floured board (use a plastic spatula to help, if necessary). Sprinkle the dough surface with additional flour. Fold over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely in plastic wrap, leave for 15 minutes to relax the gluten.
Dust hands and work surface just enough to keep dough from sticking to either and quickly, gently shape dough into a ball. Coat a flat weave cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, put dough ball, seam side down, on towel, and dust with more flour. Cover with another towel and let rise for 2 hours, it should be nearly doubled in size and won’t spring back when poked.
Some 30 minutes before dough is done rising, heat oven to 450 degrees. Place a 6-8 quart cast iron, enamel or Pyrex covered pot in the oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully (it’s very hot) take the pot out of the oven, remove the lid, and, sliding your hand under the towel in which the dough is resting, turn the dough over into the heated pot. Don’t worry if it looks lopsided, it will straighten out as it bakes (but give it a couple of straightening shakes if it will calm your baker’s troubled mind.) Cover the pot and bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid and bake for 15-30 minutes more, until properly browned. Cool on rack.
Most satisfying DIY moment: enjoy bread while still warm with butter and homemade jam or ricotta, a little salt, and tomatoes you’ve grown yourself.
For further sourdough exploration check out http://www.thefreshloaf.com; http://gristandtoll.com; http://www.sourdo.com, and Kristin Ferguson Smith can be contacted through Facebook.
