By Andrea Koch
Oh sourdough…
I heard one time on a baking show (not sure which one) that if you are a baker, you are typically obsessed with bread. And I think I fully gave myself over to that obsession when I went on my sourdough adventure.
When I get asked about the process of sourdough, I feel like I sound like a crazy baking scientist lady. The art of sourdough is basically catching wild yeast (or bacteria, lactobacillus to be exact) by using water and flour. This mixture, when it is healthy and active, will typically double or triple in size after 6-12 hours depending on several variables, some uncontrollable. This mixture is then used as your leavening for several bread recipes, in other words, it replaces the store-bought commercial yeast.
I could go into all the health benefits due to the long fermentation process (20hrs) and how it’s easier for our guts to digest because most of the gluten has been consumed by the wild yeast, or how it lowers the glycemic index of the meal you eat it with, but that’s not why I love making it.
I started my first sourdough journey a couple of years before the pandemic. One of the surgeons I worked with, who is also obsessed with baking, gave me some of his “mother” (the water/flour mixture fermented by wild yeast). I just used this to make dumplings, waffles, and pancakes. I never had the courage or the patience to make rustic sourdough loaves. I kept this “mother” alive (through a feeding process) for maybe a year then just gave up and threw it away.
Then last year around Thanksgiving I was seeing all these beautiful sourdough loaves on Instagram (thank-you algorithms) and decided I was going to do it. I started my own “mother”, or as I call it Herman, and it took a long time to get my wild yeast happy because of how cold it is. Because remember yeast likes it warm and grows best that way. Throughout this journey I had a lot of failed attempts, flat bread, gummy bread, scorched bread…you name the failure, and I did that. I had to readjust my feeding ratios, what I used to feed it, and adjust my times during the seasons (summer is Herman’s happiest time).
When I finally got my first successful loaf, which was in the middle of winter and it took forever because my husband likes the thermostat at 68, I was so thrilled. Then summer came and Herman was like that ADHD kid who had been couped up in the classroom for 8hrs and exploded out the doors to run wild. I found myself having to adjust everything all over, my timing, the amount of water I used, and the amount of Herman needed in my basic recipe.
It has been a journey of ups and downs, giving myself grace and time, and learning to be flexible and try new methods to achieve a beautiful, tasty loaf. I also learned that even if the loaf doesn’t get that beautiful rise and open airy crumb, it still tastes good and can be used. The journey is what I love and obviously eating it.
Hi, I am Andrea Koch, mother to two teenage girls (one about to fly the coop) and wife to Joel for 22yrs. I am a nurse, baker, quilter, knitter, and crocheter…let’s just be honest, I am a 90 year old trapped in a 40 something-year-old’s body with not enough time to do it all!