Beginning on Wheat Sourdough Sandwich Loaf

The next project is a whole wheat sourdough sandwich loaf. I'm adapting the recipe for the rye boule, or at least that's my plan. Baking in a loaf pan is trickier because you need for your dough to be nice and sour by the time it's ready to bake, and with a set volume, that's a little more difficult. I made one loaf yesterday that turned out OK, but not sour enough. Too much dough for the pan, so I had to bake it before it had really soured. It tastes like slightly sour whole wheat bread. Not what I wanted, but as I've mentioned before, good enough to be happily used. Made the same recipe with a larger pan today. It's still in the oven. Later note: The second loaf came out medium sour, but did not rise as well as I'd hoped. Also, it wasn't as nice looking as I'd like. More tomorrow!

Sourdough Rye Boule--Revised

I keep a container of San Francisco Sourdough Starter (I've used different brands) in the refrigerator at all times. Once a week, I add 1/2 C bread flour and 1/2 C distilled water and beat lightly with a non-metallic whisk. (Side note: The maker of one of my starters insisted that nothing metal should ever touch sourdough. I considered this unlikely, but tried a batch with no metal bowls or implements. It actually did rise better, whether by coincidence or not, I can't say. In any case, I avoid metal, though I'm still doubtful.)

This recipe takes at least a day and a half, often longer.

1. Mix 1-1/2 cups water and 1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour in a mason jar. Cover tightly. Shake well. Loosen the top a little so air can get in. Set in a warm place until bubbly and sour smelling. This may take as long as 24 hours.

2. At the same time, refresh the SF sourdough starter and put it in a warm place.

3. Make a sponge: When the starters are ready, take 1/2 C of the SF starter mix out of the main container. Mix it with the whole wheat starter, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1/2 C distilled water, 1 C whole wheat flour, and 1 tablespoon caraway seed. Mix well with a non-nonmetallic spoon, cover loosely, and set in a warm place until bubbly and sour smelling.

4. Mix 2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons gluten flour, and 2 teaspoons brown sugar with 1 cup rye flour. Add to the sponge. Add 1/2 C additional SF starter. Mix well.

5. Add unbleached bread flour to make a dough, first stirring, then working on the bread board with a nonmetallic scraper, then kneading. This dough is going to be sticky. Use enough of the bread flour, and knead enough, that it's not extremely sticky.

6. Let rise at 85 degrees. It should increase in size, but it's not going to double like yeast bread does.

7. Form into a ball shape, kneading gently and adding small amounts of bread flour as needed for consistency. Turn into parchment lined bowl. Let rise again at 85 degrees F.

8. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F with both halves of bread cloche in it. (See note below) 

9. After about half an hour, remove the dough from the bowl. Trim the parchment around the base of the loaf, leaving about 1 /1/2 inches of parchment beyond the loaf.

Transfer the dough to the bottom half of cloche. Slash the top of the bread lightly (I make three or four slashes in one direction crossed with three or four at right angles.) Cover with upper half of cloche and bake for 30 minutes.

At the end of 30 minutes, remove the top. Bake until a thermometer in the center of the loaf registers 200 degrees F. (Usually from 15 to 30 minutes more.)

Notes:

I always use distilled water. Some tap water contains chlorine compounds that will mess up your starters. Some tap water works, but I don't trust mine.

You may use either a bread proofer or a box with a heating pad set on low. Or, if you have a reliable warm place that will keep your bread mixtures at about 85 degrees F, use that. See my discussion of warming boxes--click here.

I use an unglazed pottery cloche for baking, but other pans and forms may work just as well.

The Mysterious Sourdough Starter Murders

Aaron and I have both had starters crash recently. They're going fine, and then...flatline.

The curious thing is, our methods have little in common. We use different wheat and different water. The few things we do similarly are things that have general agreement among sourdough bakers.

It's only the wild starters that are affected, the ones we've generated from flour and water. Aaron doesn't use commercial sourdough starters--I do. None of my commercial sourdough starters have had problems.

In my case, the ones that have died have started out quite sour, almost like salt rising starter. One crashed before I used it, another made one very sour loaf and one that was much less sour. And that was it.

So that's the reason for the delay in the next sourdough boule. However, I have some good commercial starter in the proofer now, and expect to be able to make some bread by tomorrow.

We think there is a mysterious sourdough starter murderer on the loose. If there were any way the cat could have done it, we'd have a suspect. But there's not.

The Next Rye Boule

I made a new rye boule today without making any serious mistakes. For once, I used someone else's recipe. The bread was good--but it wasn't good enough. This is the flip side of my belief that almost all handmade bread is good. I also want to keep trying recipes, or keep working on my own, until I have something I'm going to be permanently satisfied with.

This wasn't it. It wasn't sour enough. Texture and taste were good, but the crust was too soft, even though it was baked in an earthenware cloche. And it just wasn't tasty enough.

So, to analyze what I'll change for the next boule:

1. Not sour enough--use another sourdough starter
2. Crust is too soft--maybe try a water spray after I remove the cloche top
3. Not tasty enough--The recipe I used called for rye flour and unbleached white bread flour. I'll try substituting whole wheat flour plus a little gluten flour for some of the white.

We'll see.

Later note:

The friend who received this loaf of bread loved it. I guess it was OK.

The Orphan Loaf

I started a rye boule last night. Between being tired and having a few other things on my mind, I made a number of mistakes. Corrected them as well as I could, but this effort probably won't be the kind of loaf I'd produce proudly for guests.

Luckily, I'm not having any guests. This is a study loaf that may end up as family sandwich bread or as croutons, depending on how good my saves were. It could be anywhere from barely passable to pretty good.

I'd be willing to bet, though, that my "orphan loaf" will be better than the sliced "rye" bread I could buy at the market, or even the "artisan" loaves at the upscale market. At least it's fresh and doesn't have anything unpronounceable in it. So if you're a beginning breadmaker, take heart. Experienced people mess up too. And the results, flawed as they are, are likely to be pretty good.

Later note:

Pictured below, the bread turned out fine. Probably a bit smaller than my usual boule, and with a bit softer crust. Not as well browned as most of my breads. But plenty good enough for sandwiches. The flavor is excellent and the texture is good.

The point being, handmade bread is very good, even when it isn't perfect. And even when everything goes right, your bread may not match the photos you see in magazines and cookbooks. Those loaves are produced in special ovens, and the pictures themselves are photoshopped to a fare-thee-well.

The photos in this blog are cropped, and the size is reduced from the originals from my camera, but I do not change the color, sheen, contrast, or do any other editing that would make the bread appear better than it is.

Sourdough Breadmaking Photos

These photos illustrate sourdough breadmaking, using my San Francisco Sourdough Baguettes as an example. Click here for the recipe.

Here's a picture of the sponge stage. You can see that the batter-like mixture is bubbly. (Click on the photo for a close-up) It's ready to use.

Several photos of the process follow.

Raising the Dough

I add more ingredients to the sponge to make a dough. When the dough is kneaded enough, I put it into a bowl with markings, so I'll know when it's doubled. I set it to rise at 85F, which gives a good balance between the bacteria that cause sourness and the wild yeast that makes the bread rise.

After about an hour (or more, depending how active my starter is), here it is doubled.

I use a spatula to deflate it and let it rise again until it looks approximately like the second photo. Then I cut it in two and form each half into a long loaf.

Raising and Baking Baguettes

Loaves in baguette pan in the warming box. I set the heat pad on low to produce a temperature of around 85 degrees F.

I put a wire rack over the loaves and drape a very damp flour sack towel over the rack. This keeps the surface from drying out, and the rack keeps the towel from touching the loaves.




















Here I show my oven setup with baking tiles and a heavy pan below them. I preheat the oven with all this in it. When I put the loaves in the oven, I add a small amount of water to this pan.

Recipe: San Francisco Sourdough Baguette

Activate San Francisco sourdough starter. 

When the starter is bubbly and ready to use, mix 1 cup of it with 2 cups  all purpose flour, 1 tablespoon sugar,  and enough distilled water to make a thick batter. Bread bakers call this a sponge.

Leave it at about 85 degrees until it's very bubbly. I often let a sponge go overnight. This is supposed to be wrong, according to bread experts, but it works just fine for me, so I do it. Or, I may do it in the morning and let it rise for just an hour or two. That also works.

Mix 2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons diastatic malt powder (see note), 2 teaspoons more sugar, and 1 cup all purpose flour. Stir this into the sponge. Then add enough all purpose flour to make a dough.

When it's too thick to stir and too gooey to knead, I turn it out onto the breadboard and work in flour, using the dough scraper. To do this, I put about a half cup of flour at the back of the breadboard. Then I move it a little of it forward, and work the wet doughy mass through it, pushing and turning until the flour is absorbed.

If more flour is needed, I scrape more forward and repeat. As soon as the dough is stiff enough that I can work it with my hands without feeling like some animal in the LaBrea Tar Pits, I put down the scraper and knead it.

It's said that it's almost impossible to overknead dough by hand, and that may be true. However, it's very possible to work in too much flour. Add flour cautiously, since a lot of the structure comes from the kneading action. You want the dough to be smooth, but not dry. It's still going to be sticky when it's done, but it's less sticky than when you started.

You've kneaded enough when the dough is only slightly sticky, and when you can stretch a small amount of it pretty thin without it tearing.

Let rise at 85 degrees until doubled, deflate it, and let rise until doubled again.

Cut the dough in two.

Press each half of the dough into a rectangle on the breadboard.  Roll each rectangle up tightly into a cylinder. Place them in the two halves of a baguette pan. (A cookie sheet is OK, but you'll get a better shape with the baguette pan. A baguette spreads as it cooks unless it's supported. Still makes fine bread, though!)

Let loaves rise at 85 degrees.

While the loaves are rising, prepare the oven: Preheat oven to 375 degrees, preferably with tiles in it. Below the rack with the tiles, preheat a shallow pan. When the loaves are put in the oven, pour about 1 tablespoon water into the preheated pan.

When the loaves have risen to the edge of the pan, slash longitudinally with a razor dipped in water.

Brush the entire surface of the loaves with water.

Bake until well browned and crusty.

Note: Diastatic malt can be hard to find. I get it on the Internet. I hate to call for something like this, but it makes a big difference in the bread's flavor. You can leave it out, but you'll have more of a floury taste, less like professionally made bread.

Recipe: Greek Bread

This is a yeast bread that I've made for many years. I got the recipe from my sister, she got it from her first husband, and neither of us is sure where he got it. As I recall, braiding it was an idea of my own, the first time I made it. It's so good that way, increasing the area of the tender crust, that I've never done it any other way.

Put one package (2 1/4 teaspoons) regular yeast in a bowl. Pour over it one half cup of warm water. Let it dissolve.

Slice up half a stick of butter (2 ounces). Put it in a metal or pyrex bowl. Add two tablespoons of sugar and two teaspoons of salt. Scald two cups of whole milk and pour it over this mixture. Let it cool to lukewarm.

Combine the yeast mixture and the milk mixture. Add enough bread flour to make a batter, like pancake batter. Beat 100 strokes.

Let rise for 50 minutes.

Knead in enough bread flour to make a dough that is solid but tacky, not quite sticky.

Put in a greased bowl, and grease the top (this improves rising by preventing the dough from forming a crustlike dry spot on top). Cover with a damp, smooth kitchen towel (not terry, unless you are ready for some VERY interesting laundry), Set it in a warm place to rise for 40 minutes or until doubled.

Punch down and let rise again for 40 minutes or until almost doubled.

To make a braided loaf, separate the dough into thirds. Form each third into a long cylinder.

Lay them parallel on a piece of baking parchment and begin braiding in the center. (If you start at one end, you can't finish the opposite end neatly.)

Braid to the end and turn the bread around.

Now comes the only "trick" to this--if you braided the first half by laying one strand over the other, as we normally braid, you have to do the second half by laying it under. Or, as in this case, vice versa. Otherwise, you'd just unbraid the first half. This is one of those things that's easy to do and hard to explain. Here's the finished braid:

Tuck the ends under for a nice finish. Let the loaf rise for about 30 minutes.

Bake in a 375 oven for about 35 minutes…it depends. It’s done when it is browned and makes a hollow sound when you turn it over and thump it on the bottom. Or when the inside is about 195 degrees.

I did a slight variation on this particular loaf. I substituted 1 cup of sprouted wheat flour for an equal amount of the bread flour.

Outline of Breadmaking Procedure

1. Make or activate starter. Or, if using commercial yeast, proof the yeast.
2. Make a sponge (basically a thick batter) with flour, yeast or starter, sugar, and water or other liquid. Let rise.
3. Add salt, oil or butter (if used), enough flour to make dough, and other dry ingredients in recipe.
4. Knead.
5. Let rise.
6. Deflate.
7. Let rise again.
8. Shape into loaves.
9. Let rise again.
10. Bake.

Every one of these steps has some details and tips, but basically, that's all there is to it.

Ingredients--Salt

Salt supposedly slows or interferes with yeast in some way.

I make bread by the sponge method, which I learned from the Tassajara Bread Book (one of the only bread cookbooks I actually like). A sponge is a batter-like combination of ingredients that you let rise for a while before you add enough flour to make it into a dough. To give my yeast a nice head start, I leave out the salt until after the sponge stage.

It's important not to forget to do it at that point, and it's easy to forget. And the bread is pretty poor without salt. So I add the salt to one cup of flour, and put that next to my sponge, as the first thing to add when I start making it into dough. That works well.

Butter or oil, if used, is best added after the sponge stage, too.

Ingredients--Milk

Bread recipes that call for fluid milk usually say to scald the milk--bring it to 180F. I have a couple of books about bread science and food chemistry that I respect a great deal more than bread cookbooks. One of them explained that the proteins in milk interfere with formation of the gluten structure in bread unless the milk is cooked. That sounds reasonable.

As far as I can tell, though, nonfat dry milk for home use isn't brought to this temperature. I've used it very successfully in breadmaking, so I see a possible contradiction here, though it's possible that something else in the processing affects the milk protein in a way that would keep it from interfering with gluten.

Anyway, I plan to test this in the future--two identical loaves, one with scalded milk and one with nonfat dry milk, to see whether the dry milk performs less well.

First Diatribe about Bread Cookbooks

Bread cookbooks. The prettier the cover, the more you'd better watch out. I learned that one well-known bread cookbook featured a cover photo of bread that the author admitted she couldn't make in a home kitchen. She used a professional kitchen, because even she couldn't get such beautiful results at home. Now if the book had been aimed at professionals, that would have been OK. Since it was marketed to people whose kitchens couldn't possibly produce the breads she used to tempt them to buy the book, I'd call that cover flatly dishonest.

The contents are often no better. As I mentioned in my last post, I ignore the advice in some bread cookbooks to avoid using sugar or honey in bread. I've always used a small amount of sugar in my dough, and the bread turns out perfect. I've tried leaving out the sugar, and the bread doesn't rise well or brown well.

But that's a detail. My main objection to most bread cookbooks is that they don't help you make good bread. Some  feature complicated recipes that take a week or more, a lot of work, and a lot of ingredients. And the bread is still mediocre.

Sometimes the recipes just don't work at all. For those, it's good if you're a pig farmer. Pigs eat anything.

One book's main recipe takes days of painstaking labor to produce a sourdough starter. It has stages, and a handy little calendar so you can keep track of them. It has sub-recipes and sub-sub recipes. And then the final bread dough actually contains more than enough commercial yeast to raise the bread by itself. And more than enough to override the sour taste. I have no idea what the complicated starter is supposed to do.

Another book extols the virtues of a desem starter--another one of those prolonged, involved processes. Luckily, before I tried it, I found the blog of a man who'd gone through the whole number. On the second try, he got edible bread, but it obviously wasn't nearly worth the labor he'd put into it.

Another included the author's admission that he'd started with a good many testers, but that some had dropped out in frustration because they weren't able to make good bread with the recipes, even with personal coaching from the author. Apparently, that didn't open his eyes to the need for changes.

I'll rail about bread cookbooks more as we go along--basically, I loathe most of them. They contradict one another. They contradict themselves. They make easy things hard. They probably make their authors rich.

The thing that contributed most to the success of my bread was donating most of my bread cookbooks to the local thrift store.

So farewell, Peter Reinhart. Farewell, Laurel Robertson. Farewell, Rose Levy Beranbaum. Your books will benefit my local volunteer fire department. I believe they sell hardbacks for fifty cents, and it's possible that your books have fifty cents' worth of good advice in them somewhere. I didn't find it, but someone might.

Ingredients--Sugars

The yeast and bacteria consume the natural sugars and carbohydrates in the flour, and also added sugar, at least to a point. I learned to add about a tablespoon of sugar to the dough for a large loaf. Or honey, or molasses--some kind of sugar.

Various bread cookbooks say you're not supposed to use honey in bread dough, or in sourdough bread mixes, but there sure are a lot of recipes out there for doing just that. I've read you're not supposed to use sugar at all. Any kind of sugar.

But I do use sugar. Not much of it, but I do use it. I think it makes the bread better, and I don't eat bread cookbooks.

Ingredients--Flour

A lot can be said about flour, and I'll probably say more in later posts. This is just basics to get started with.

Flours differ a lot from one country to another. Since I live in the United States, I'm know a great deal more about the flour here than about any other.

For breadmaking, one very important factor is the protein, or gluten, content of the flour. The gluten forms the structure of the bread. (An aside: At this point, I know almost nothing about gluten free baking.)

Here are a few of the flour types I use regularly:

Unbleached All Purpose Flour--I never use bleached, because the unbleached tastes better. I don't use AP flour for bread, except for fat free recipes like French bread.

Bread Flour--This is a very high gluten flour. In French bread, which contains no shortening, it makes the crust too hard, and you get cracks all over the loaf that look like the cracks in a very beat up concrete sidewalk. However, I do use it in pizza dough and as part of flour mixtures that include low gluten flours like rye. It often works well in breads that have a fairly high fat content, because fat helps control the gluten structure. (That's why it's called "shortening." It shortens gluten strands in baked goods.)

Whole Wheat Flour--This contains the bran and germ of the wheat, which is milled out of white flour.

Rye Flour--Flour made from rye berries. Rye flour behaves quite differently from wheat flour, and I'll be very specific about how to handle it when I give rye bread recipes. Pumpernickel is a type of rye flour.

Cornmeal--I use it mostly in anadama and salt rising bread. I always use stone ground.

Semolina--For pizza dough.

Sprouted wheat flour--Used for flavor. I sometimes use it, more often add a little diastatic malt to the mix. Technical explanations as to why don't make much sense to me, but it does taste good.

The photo shows a loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread, along with a crock I use for flour and an old wooden scoop.

Ingredients--Sourdough Starter

Sourdough starter is easy to buy, and relatively easy to make. I've done both.

What you need to know about starter is that it's a combination of wild yeasts and bacteria. The yeasts are probably already on the flour (some bakers think they come from the air, and I don't believe either theory has been proved.)

The bacteria are related to the ones that turn milk into yogurt. Not the same--you can't use yogurt or yogurt starter for sourdough starter. They're in the same family, though. There are lots of ideas about where the bacteria come from.

Not too surprising--the yeast make the bread rise, and the bacteria make it sour.

However, like many roommates, they differ when it comes to what they like. The bacteria like it warmer--around 92F (33C). The yeast like the heat turned down a little--more like 82F (28C). The temperatures for them to reproduce and spread are slightly lower than the best temperature for them to ferment the bread dough.

You can do a lot of fine tuning with this, but in real life, you'll probably get your best results at about 85 degrees F (29C)--at least as far as I know now. I do plan to do some experiments, and will correct this opinion if I come up with something better.

If you buy a starter--which is what a fair number of bakers recommend that beginners do--follow the directions of the company that made the starter. They'll tell you how to get it going well.

Good vendors for sourdough starter are King Arthur Flour and Sourdough International. Both sell on the Internet. The starter I use most often is the SDI San Francisco starter, but I've used the KA one, and it's good, too. You can also buy sourdough starter in many grocery stores, health food stores, and cooking stores.

To make a starter, combine equal parts of whole wheat flour and distilled or spring water. (Whether tap water will work is controversial. Apparently, some tap water works and some doesn't.) I use one cup of each.

Cover, but not tightly. The microorganisms need air. Keep the mixture at 85 degrees until it's bubbly and sour smelling. This will take a couple of days.

Salt rising bread starter is similar, but made with cornmeal instead of wheat. You have to use health food cornmeal--the ordinary kind has been processed in some way that kills the bacteria. I was very confused about this at first, because my recipe (Joy of Cooking) called for "water ground cornmeal," and as far as I could tell, it didn't exist. Finally I tried stone ground, and it worked fine. The brand I generally use is Bob's Red Mill, but probably any organic or health food brand would work. The liquid in salt rising bread starter is whole milk rather than water.

There's a potato starter for salt rising bread, also, but I've never tried it. The cornmeal seems much easier.

Myth Alert--Refrigeration

You'll read and hear opinions that the way to increase the sourness of sourdough bread is to refrigerate the dough for extended periods. This is false.

The sourness of sourdough comes primarily from lactobacilli. Sourdough lactobacilli are related to the cultures that turn milk into yogurt.

The ones that live in sourdough cultures, like the yogurt ones, are active in warm environments and inactive in cold ones. Your bread dough will not become more sour in the refrigerator. What happens in the refrigerator is that both the yeast and the bacteria slow down a lot. With prolonged refrigeration, they eventually consume the sugars in the dough and go dormant. What you get then is ugly bread with a pale crust, because the sugars that brown during baking are gone.

Lactobacilli and yeasts have slightly different ideal temperatures. The best compromise seems to be about 85 degrees F (29.5 C). With higher temperatures, up to around 92 F, you may get more souring, but you'll quickly lose your yeast, and with it, the rising capacity of the bread. With slightly lower temperatures, you'll get more yeast activity, but less souring.

But the refrigerator doesn't do sourdough bread any favors, even if a lot of books and web sites say it does.

Equipment--Miscellaneous

I use other things for breadmaking--some of them important. Rather than try to discuss dough scrapers, bowl scrapers, spatulas, pastry brushes, thermometers, pot holders, and every other thing I might pick up, I plan to go on and talk about ingredients. As miscellaneous gadgets come into use, I'll mention them.

Equipment--Baking Tools

The baking cloche, above at left, is for round "hearth breads," also called "boules." If that's what you want to bake, one of these would definitely be a good investment, because they make wonderfully crisp crusts.

In the center are two open loaf pans for sandwich loaves. The white one is Corning ware. I like it because it's a little taller than most loaf pans, so it supports the bread a bit better as it rises. I use the metal pan for smaller loaves.

On the far right is a metal pan for French bread, or baguettes. Again, the thing to use if this shape loaf is what you want. For either baguettes or boules, of course, you can just set the bread loaf on a cookie sheet or other flat surface. You'll get much better shapes and much better crusts if you use these specialty pans, though.

Second from left at the front is a baker's tile. They come in sets of four. You line your oven rack with them and they give your bread a good crust. They're also good for pizza.

I use them with the baguette pan, or with any of the open loaf pans. I don't use them with the cloche.

Equipment--Warming

THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ITEMS IN BREADMAKING

For years, I followed recipes that said to put bread dough in a warm, draft free place. Not a problem. The stove had a pilot light, and so did the water heater. Even the top of the refrigerator was warm. There were lots of places to choose from.

I'm all for energy efficiency, but it hasn't been kind to breadmakers. Who has a pilot light anymore? My water heater is so well insulated, there's no warmth to spare.

I live in a cold climate. My thermostat is set at 70 in the winter, but there's no way a bowl of bread dough on the kitchen counter reaches that temperature--not that 70 is warm enough to begin with. And I like to turn the heat off at night.

So I needed temperature control. To start with, I jury rigged a bread dough warmer (I later learned the correct name for such a thing is a "proofer.") I put a heating pad--the kind you'd use if you put your back out--into a Sterilite tub. Set the heating pad on low, put the bowl of bread dough on it, laid a damp cloth over the bowl, covered the tub, and waited. It worked great. I later added a couple of refinements, like a thermometer. And a rack between the dough bowl and the damp cloth so the cloth wouldn't sag into the bread dough.

I learned to warm my bowl of dough initially by setting the heating pad thermostat on medium, and turning it to low when the temp in the tub got to 85. All in all, it's cheap, and it works. It holds a lot, including long French bread loaves.

A refinement is an actual bread proofer I found for sale on Amazon. Made by Brod and Taylor, It's digital and can be set to exact degrees. It also folds for storage.

So what's the big deal? Why is this so crucial?

The reason is, after a lot of experimenting, both Aaron and I found that our sourdough succeeded reliably if we gave it a warm environment. And it failed as often as not if we didn't. In fact, we agreed that temperature control is the key factor in homemade sourdough bread.

So find, make, or buy some kind of incubator for your starters and doughs. The alternative is constant frustration.

Equipment--Mixing

How you mix bread depends largely on what kind of dough you're mixing.

On the left of the photo is a dough hook for an electric mixer. This works, but it's hard to tell much without touching the dough. The big advantage of a mixer, if you have to use a machine, is that it doesn't overheat or overmix the dough as easily as a food processor does.

Second from left is a bread mixing tool. It does a very good job of getting thinner mixtures, like starters and sponges, smooth. I like it a lot, but it's not strictly necessary. A good spoon will do the same thing with a little more work.

Third is a Cuisinart blade. I use a Cuisinart only for pizza dough, or for thin mixtures such as soakers and starters--I'll go into that later.

For other breads, I find the dough gets too tough. This is especially a problem with fat free doughs, such as French bread. Also, a Cuisinart doesn't hold much, and it's easy for the dough to get under the blade and onto the shaft. I completely destroyed one Cuisinart, trying to make rye bread in it.

Fourth is an old eggbeater. These work very well for thin mixtures such as starters. A hand held electric mixer would probably do the same thing.

Last is an old fashioned spoon. Ones like this aren't made anymore, as far as I know, and I like them much better for bread than anything that is made now. Fortunately, they're still quite inexpensive to buy on auction sites or sites that sell vintage kitchenware. You can even still find them in thrift stores. I love them because the handle is comfortable, the shaft won't bend or break, and the spoon itself is sturdy enough and has enough of an edge to cut dough.

Equipment--Bread Bowls

One of the features of my soapmaking books is the "Myth" sections. In the beginning of each book, I debunk the commonest myths about soapmaking and milk soapmaking.

Breadmaking, especially sourdough, is rife with statements that look to me like myths. One that I've actually disproved is the "nonmetallic container" myth.

Many sourdough recipes insist that you have to use a non-metal bowl. This probably made sense in the days of iron and galvanized kitchenware. It makes no sense at all, chemically or any other way, with stainless steel or enamelware.

And pottery, a major alternative to metal, has its problems. I had a real fancy for a Mason Cash bread bowl at one time. They are so beautiful. Then I realized that the bowls have been made for over a century in the same design. How would I know if a bowl like that was made before it was recognized that lead glazed pottery isn't suitable for food use? Same with any picturesque antique pottery bowl.

So I gave up on the Mason Cash bowl. Here I show a collection of vessels I use for breadmaking. On the left is a large plastic food storage box. Sitting on it, an enamelware soup pot. Beside it, a smaller enamelware soup pot. Then a stainless steel soup pot, a glass measuring pitcher, and a stainless steel bowl. They all work well.

I particularly like the large glass pitcher, because "rise until doubled in bulk" really means something when you have measuring lines.

The plastic container is nice because it seals tightly, which prevents dough from drying out. Especially good if I have to refrigerate a dough overnight.

I've used them all successfully, as well as a larger stainless steel soup pot that wasn't in the photo because it had rye dough in it at the time.

The blue willow platter isn't one of my breadmaking vessels, just background. I love blue willow.

Breadmaking by Feel

I don't like to get too fussy, and I'm not going to recommend that you spend a lot of money on stuff. I'm sure some people will disagree with my choices, and that's fine with me.

Here's my first inflammatory opinion: I don't use "baker's percentages." I understand them. As a soapmaker, I have a great scale, and I know how to use it. I use it in cooking, all the time.

But I don't use it for bread. I don't weigh ingredients for bread. I don't actually measure my flour either. I learned to make bread 50 years ago, and back in the dark ages, we learned to do it by feel. And I still do it that way.

If you're a beginner, your reaction--very likely--is "Thanks, Grandma, but I don't want to take fifty years to learn to make bread."

However, it doesn't take fifty years. One or two loaves that are less-than-perfect, supposing you don't have an experienced breadmaker looking over your shoulder. (And even imperfect bread is awfully good.) And after that, you have "a hand for bread." You can do it every time, and do it right, even without a recipe.

I originally learned from my mother and sister, from friends, from the "Joy of Cooking," and--most of all--from the "Tassajara Bread Book." I learned from my own mistakes. I experimented--sometimes with great results. I learned from my husband, Aaron, who wrote a small book called "Simple Sourdough." Lately, I've learned a lot from my friend Linda, a microbiologist who explains what's going on in those sourdough cultures in terms a layman can understand.

The next few posts will be about equipment, some of it standard or even upscale, some of it my own jury rigs. I admit to a special fondness for jury rigs--they make me feel like I've pulled one over on the universe. And maybe I have.

Beginning Smart Breadmaking

I'm the author of "Smart Soapmaking," "Milk Soapmaking," and "Smart Lotionmaking." Also one cookbook, "Baking with Cookie Molds."

Lately, it's been bread, especially sourdough and variations. I'm not really interested in writing another book, and besides, there are already approximately one million bread books out there. I've found some useful and others to be a waste of money and time. I'll be discussing them on this blog. However, the world obviously doesn't need another one.

So, no book. Instead, I'm going to chronicle my adventures in a blog. I hope those of you who are interested in breadmaking will follow along and offer comments. I plan to be frank about my failures, and I'm eager to hear what you have to say. I'll do a happy dance about my successes, too.

I like to keep things fairly simple, but if a little science is helpful, I'll work it in. I'm not a scientist, so nothing is going to get technical.

I'll post soon about my San Francisco sourdough baguettes, which I finally worked out--but I sure made my share of lousy bread along the way. Good thing my neighbor likes to make croutons. She got quite a bit of material while I was figuring the whole thing out.