Hands up, anyone who has forgotten to save a bit of sourdough starter for the next time when they’re making a batch of bread.
Four hands are waving high in my house. Both my roommate and I are culprits. We take turns forgetting. Yesterday I came home from a weekend away to discover a bowl of bread dough rising on the counter, and a look of concern on my roommate’s face.
“I only had 180 grams of starter, so I had to use it all,” he said. (The recipe takes 225 grams.)
This was really my bad—tired of having too much starter in the fridge and dealing with sourdough starter discard, I had cut it down to two tablespoons. I made a mental note to build up the volume by feeding it a couple of times before starting the next batch of bread, but didn’t share that note with my roommate. Oops.
His dough was feisty with bubbles, clearly not suffering from its reduced dose of wild yeast. But—what about next time? Faced with our no-starter dilemma, we pursued three strategies: 1) pinched off a bit of dough and saved it in the fridge, 2) reconstituted some dried starter with a couple of tablespoons of warm water, and 3) called the friend I gave the starter to last month.
Results from strategy 1 are not in—the portion of dough I pinched off contains salt, in a proportion of 20 grams to 700 grams of water and 1 kilo of flour. Salt is essential to bread dough, slowing down the fermentation process and strengthening gluten. But will the salt slow down the fermentation process too much when I try to turn that bit of dough back into starter? The internet tells me no, but I have misgivings. (Keep those cards and letters coming, bakers! What is your experience?)
Strategy 2 seems to be working. The dried starter softened in the water overnight and blended nicely when I whizzed it with the electric latte whisk. I’ve added equal parts flour and warm water and there are bubbles already.
Strategy 3 is the backup plan. My friend is currently in Dawson but when she’s home again, she will deliver starter, pronto, and I will thank her.
The ultimate result, and I’m sure you can see it coming, is that we are going to have a whole lot of starter on our hands. Which means a whole lot of sourdough starter discard, the very reason I cut it down in the first place. I was trying to avoid what my sister calls “breadlam”—those days when not only are you making sourdough bread, but also sourdough “discard” brownies, crackers, pretzels, gingerbread … anything to use up the extra.
(In case, just in case, you too have found yourself drowning in starter, here is a recipe for Sourdough Discard Bagels, to help you crawl out onto dry land).
Sourdough Woes
Ingredients
- 1 cup 230 gr warm water
- 2 1/4 tsp yeast
- 1 cup about 240 gr active starter OR discard starter straight from fridge
- 2 Tbsp 30 gr sugar
- 1 Tbsp 10 gr salt
- 2 ½ to 3 cups 350–420 gr bread or all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 2 litres water
- 2 Tbsp baking soda
- 1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water for egg wash
- 1/2 cup sesame seeds
Instructions
- Pour water into a medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle yeast overtop and allow to bloom, about 10 minutes.
- Whisk in sourdough starter, sugar and salt.
- Add 2 ½ cups flour and stir to combine. If dough is wet and sticky, gradually add the final ½ cup flour until you have a rough, shaggy dough.
- Turn onto a floured counter and knead until smooth. Shape into a ball.
- Pour olive oil into a clean bowl. Add dough to the bowl and turn so that the whole ball of dough is coated in olive oil.
- Cover dough with a plate or a tea towel and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.
- Set water and baking soda to boil in a large pot. Once boiling, turn water down to a rolling boil—between medium- and medium-high heat.
- Turn dough onto a countertop—no need for flour—and divide into 8 equal pieces.
- Roll each piece into a ball. Make a hole in each ball with your forefinger and enlarge it using your fore and middle fingers.
- Place each shaped dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Slide 3 bagels at a time into the water. Boil for 1 minute 30 seconds, or 2 minutes for a chewier bagel. No need to turn the bagel in the water.
- Return each bagel to the baking sheet and continue until all the bagels are boiled.
- Brush each bagel with egg wash. Pour sesame seeds into a small plate. Dip each egg-washed bagel into the sesame seeds to coat the surface.
- Bake at 375F until golden brown—about 30 minutes. Cool on a rack before slicing.
