Tastebud Chicago

We’re trying to bake something new every weekend, for the most part we’ve kept our promise to ourselves. We’ve tried a handful of variations on the no knead bread recipe from the New York Times, some whole wheat buttermilk biscuits, and a cookie or two. This week, we’re trying something we haven’t in the past couple of years, sourdough bread.

The bubbly sourdough starter.

For some reason, Chicago doesn’t like sourdough. We’re not sure why. In Arizona, it’s almost always an option at restaurants. Here though, you almost never see it. It’s a shame, as it’s one of our favorite bread types. Baking it is sort of a mystery to a lot of people. Commercial yeast turns out standard modern bread. It’s good, it’s flavorful, but it’s not sour. We’ve bought special “sourdough starters” from speciality shops in the past, believing that that was the only way to make sourdough. The loaves turned out great, but the starters were relatively expensive. When you can buy a loaf of bread for two dollars, it doesn’t really make sense to buy a speciality $5 starter.

Sourdough used to be called “bread.” Meaning, all bread used to be sour. Yeast wasn’t something you’d buy at the grocery store in the time before grocery stores, so a home baker (everyone was a home baker back then) would mix some flour and water, and let it sit out in the open air for a few days. Yeast floats out in the air (yuck!), after a few days in open air, the flour and water batter would start to bubble as the air-yeasts got at it. This “starter” would then be added to more flour and water, kneaded, and baked in a big communal oven. Small portions of the starter would be kept aside. More flour and water would be added, to keep the yeast alive. A starter kept like this could last a family for years.

Eventually, the communal ovens became bakeries, scientists figured out that yeast was what made the starters bubble, brewers started to package yeast for sale, and everyone forgot how to bake their own bread, until the Japanese invented bread machines and everyone remembered how good baking bread smelled, but refused to get their hands dirty trying to make it. Phew. For a little bit more in depth information on the history of bread, we recommend “On Food and Cooking”. It’s one of our favorite bed time books.

“Recipes From the Old Mill” has a few sourdough recipes in it, one of which we’re going to play with on Saturday. The best part of all their sourdough recipes is that they’re built around a homemade sourdough starter. The starter is essentially rye flour, water, a half teaspoon of milk, one grain of yeast, and three to five days sitting in a covered container at room temperature. We mixed ours up on Tuesday night, to get ready for a Saturday bake.

So, in short, this article is a bit of a cliff hanger. Will the sourdough turn out right?! Will we have yummy bread to eat with our Saturday pot roast?! Stay tuned!