Sourdough: tips and recommendations to start your own levain and bake bread like a pro

Hello friends 💫

Today's entry it's been a long time coming, I've been very hesitant to share any recipe for sourdough artisan bread because, well, I don't think I've started to fully understand sourdough until recently. And to be fully honest, I'm still learning. But I've come to enjoy sourdough baking very much, it's another level; another league. After carefully measuring the pros and cons, I think it's worth sharing the little things I've learned along the way.

Little by little, I've been gathering utensils and know-how, and that's what I want to share with you. I've read a lot of blogs and watched many videos; each baker has his own way, but the basics are, after all, the same for everybody. If you are starting your sourdough journey, don't get disappointed by a few failures! Practice makes perfect 👩🏻‍🍳

This post assumes you know what sourdough is, but for the sake of clarifying, I will briefly say that sourdough is, very simply, bacteria. Bacteria found in the process of fermenting flour to make bread. It is known by different names: levain, masa madre, lievito madre... This is how our ancestors made bread: naturally fermenting flour with water and creating wild yeast.

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What's this bacteria made of? Citing King Arthur Flour "When flour is mixed with liquid, the friendly bacteria (lactobacilli) and wild yeast in both the flour and your surrounding environment start working together. Within their flour-and-water slurry (now called starter), these tiny living creatures generate byproducts that cause bread to rise and give it complex, rich flavor.".

As a consequence of these elements, each starter is different and unique 😊 If you and your family tolerate gluten, you can feed your starter with white flour or rye. When I first created my starter, I fed my levain of rye flour, and after a week, I switched to white flour. That's the usual way to create a starter, but you can choose to feed your starter of only rye flour or create two starters from the same first levain. I don't fancy any particular flour, I feed my starter of common grocery store flour and it's been fine. However, for the past few months, I've been considering creating a completely new starter only fed with organic flour to experiment. Perhaps that's a project I start this year, who knows 😜

The world of sourdough is one of its own! You don't need any particular tool or utensil to start a culture, the only thing you need is water and flour, if possible, rye flour, but whole wheat will do too. At first, you will feed your starter once a day every day, and then the feeding time will increase to morning and evening every day. After 7 to 10 days, your starter will be ready to be used.

I'm not going to go into the times, schedules, and rules because there's a lot of information and resources out there. I personally used two sources at the beginning:

1. In English - Maurizio's guide from the blog The Perfect Loaf: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/

2. In Spanish - Miriam's guide from the blog El Invitado de Invierno: https://invitadoinvierno.com/recursos/hacer-masa-madre/

These two blogs helped me understand the whys and hows of sourdough and proved to be a very helpful guide to develop and create my first levain. After that, I've been looking up many other blogs.

These are particularly interesting for sourdough bread and sourdough discard recipes:

• The Clever Carrot: https://www.theclevercarrot.com/sourdough-baking/

• Flour on my Face: https://flouronmyface.com/

• Top with Cinnamon: https://topwithcinnamon.com/

• King Arthur Flour: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/

Amongst the sourdough books I've come to love, here are the musts and basics for any wannabe baker:

• Tartine, by Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Prueitt

• Sourdough: Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More, by Sarah Owens

• The Sourdough School: The Ground-breaking Guide to Making Gut-friendly Bread, by Vanessa Kimbell

• Pan de Pueblo: Recetas E Historias de Los Panes Y Panaderias de España, by Ibán Yarza

And what have I learnt? Here are my five cents on sourdough baking 🍞

1. To bake a good boule of sourdough, all comes to one extremely important point: technique. If you take anything from this entry, let it be this point. Even if you have the best standing mixer, flour, or pot to bake your bread, it won't matter, and it won't make any difference unless you understand and put into practice a good technique. That implies learning what's sourdough, the timings, the textures and smells, the importance of gluten development, and the resting times of your dough. Also, learn how to shape your dough, watch videos, and start by imitating what others do. I found this video of Sarah Owens very helpful when I started. Little by little, you will gain confidence and do your thing.

2. Get your hands dirty: mix the ingredients with your hands, they are your best friends. I used to rely on my standing mixer to avoid making a mess but I've come to love touching and feeling the dough. One of the best things is seeing (and feeling) the evolution: from a shaggy and wet mixture to an elastic and non-sticky dough. After several stretch and folds, do the windowpane test. Keep practicing 😊 and if you find your go-to recipe, stick to it, and from there experiment with other flours and combinations.

3. Be patient: using wild yeast takes more time. The dough has to rise and proof for more hours than commercial yeast for the gluten to develop and form beautiful loafs of bread. Learn about the times and experiment: bake a loaf of bread from a boule that hasn't been properly shaped or proofed, and you'll see you won't make the same mistake again 😄

4. Always use your discard! I gather my discard in one big jar that I keep using for a week to make crackers, focaccia, pizza dough, scones... I have even baked cheesecake with sourdough discard in lieu of flour and reducing the liquids. And OMG sourdough discard brownies. The softness is indescriptible, it hits the spot every time. Research, research, research for recipes and ways of using your levain excess.

5. Invest in baking utensils only if you get hooked into baking bread - although chances are you will get very hooked. By baking utensils I mean: a banetton or proofing basket, a couple of scrapers, a lame and a couple of big bowls. A utensil that improved substantially my bread was a cast-iron casserole. I think that anybody who enjoys cooking, in general, will have a cast-iron casserole. If you don't, get a standard one, there's no need to get super pricey ones like Le Creuset or Staub. These days it's very easy to find affordable cast-iron casseroles on Amazon, check it out 😄