It’s Slow Food defined, but worth it. Miriam winds down the sourdough series with a plan.
It’s true, sourdough takes time. So do all good things. But once you’ve established your starter, a world of delicious home-made breads opens up to you. And the good news is that sourdough also makes quicker breads like muffins, cornbread, pizza dough and biscuits.
If you’ve been keen on making sourdough bread, no doubt you’ve been following my series of posts in earnest. And you’ll get everything you need from this series of posts on how to make your own sourdough. We started off with Part I, Making a Sourdough Starter, here,, then went on to Part II, Care and Feeding of The Starter, here, and then last week we provided you the recipe (Find Part III, The Recipe, here.
Now the moment of truth, the moment you’ve been waiting for: this post winds up the sourdough series. Baking sourdough bread is not easy, but it’s worth it. Now, to help organize your sourdough baking, I’ve provided a schedule.
Part IV: Sourdough Schedule
1. Five to 6 days before baking: start your starter. From the 3rd day, feed it once every 24 hours. You only need to do this once, unless by mistake you use up all your starter.
2. The night before baking: make the sponge; feed the starter (step 1 in previous post), put the refreshed starter away after 2 hours. Let the sponge sit overnight to ferment.
3. Baking day: Make the dough with fermented sponge and added flour.
Rising time first proof: 2-3 hours
Rising time second proof: 1 hour
Baking time: 30-45 minutes
There are hundreds of sourdough recipes on the Internet. A great resource is the Sourdough FAQs.
I wish many happy baking hours!
You’ll enjoy these Middle-Eastern recipes on Green Prophet:
Kibbeh, Middle-Eastern Stuffed Meatballs
Poussins Stuffed With Pine Nuts and Rice
Moroccan Stuffed Artichoke Hearts
Photo of sliced sourdough cheese bread by Miriam Kresh
Author: Miriam Kresh
Miriam Kresh is an American ex-pat living in Israel. Her love of Middle Eastern food evolved from close friendships with enthusiastic Moroccan, Tunisian and Turkish home cooks. She owns too many cookbooks and is always planning the next meal. Miriam can be reached at miriam (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
