Sour sourdough - A French perspective

My high school French does not serve me well after 40 years, so I will be unable to truly appreciate Janedo's writing about French bread.

I do hope she credits Steven L. Kaplan, an American professor from Cornell University, for his help and expertise with revitalizing the French bread industry, which had fallen on hard times by the mid 1980s.

The New York Times had an article about it Kaplan anyone cares to read up on him.  Sorry for the long link, but I've included a shorter one, too, as I am not sure the longer one will wrap well here.

http://tinyurl.com/5ej4h5

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E1DF123AF93AA15752C1A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all 

Kaplan's book, is also quite good. "Good Bread Is Back: A Contemporary History of French Bread, the Way It Is Made, and the People Who Make It "

Boron

Oh my! What a suprise to see you talking about me. The discussion that ensued from my San Fran sourdough bread attempts and trying to follow the recipe to a T have created quite a discussion among fellow sourdough lovers here in France. One of the women is Polish and has told us about an old Polish bread tradition. Two of the women live in the States. I can't really give you a simple version of it all but we all shared our different techniques and ended up also talking about the 5 min a day technique.

What struck me about Reinhart's book is that he says that San Fran is sour, French is not. This is true to a degree, but the breads that I make on a daily basis have a little bit of sourness but not overwhelmingly as the San Fran has... and I admit that I don't really like too much sourness. I've been fiddling around with the delayed fermentation and yesterday's bread was nice... but the crust wasn't crunchy enough because I did the old thing to avoid the splitting as the dough rises. The crumb was pretty chewy, too. I still prefer the bread I make with a liquid starter and all in a day.

The results of our discussions are basically that it is great to learn about other techniques and all the potential of a starter whether it be liquid (which is very popular here in France with home bakers) or stiff but in the end each baker has to find the type of bread that he/she likes eating and the techniques that work best with their own ingredients and environment.

Right now I'm in to Reinhart's whole grain breads... a whole other topic! Yikes! 

I realize Reinhart is pretty intense about bread making, buut when I started reading his book I was quite shocked and maybe miffed by his claim that world class bread can't be made in a day and that HIS techniques will get you there. I felt like I had been making "bad" bread up until now... but then why does everyone like my bread so much. So, I started my experimenting...and was happy to conclude that his techniques are interesting, but that great "world class" bread can be made rather simply as well! I am a big sourdough fan. I like a bit of sourness, but not a LOT. French sourdough varies and the bread around where I live (the deep South near Spain) is very mild almost bland. I'm sure they use an 'old dough' method.

Sourdough has been greatly revived in the last few years by Kayser. He injects his sourdough with a bit of yeast and from what I've seen, doesn't even really give the sourdough a chance to fully develop. That is great for his fabulous 'baguette Monge" named after the road where his first bakery was (so I've been told) and for certain flours that benefit from a blander leavening taste (like Kamut which has a nice nutty flavor that could be lost otherwise). But for other breads I don't see the use. I like the taste and texture of real sourdough bread.

I admit that I don't even know who Steven Kaplin is... but I'll go see!

The cultural differences are huge. Can you imagine that I have to bake at least a kilo of bread a day just to keep up with the family consumption? We eat A LOT of bread! Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

 Jane 

The reality about the situation in France is that people here are starting to eat pretty badly and our famous baguette often very crappy made with flour that has additives in it. It is ok warm but a few hours later is truly inedible!

But even though many eat poorly, you can always find a good load of epicuriens our heath minders that want/demand good food and of course good bread. Kids here have started eating breakfast cereal, but many still have slices of bread with butter and jam and some even eat cheese. Every meal has bread and often ends with bread and cheese. In our house I have a budget of around 25-30 euros a week just in cheese!

I guess what I'm saying as well is that while French people think americans eat very poorly, site like this show americans very interested in great food and Americans think the French eat so well, but their diet is slowly being lost. But in both places there are a lot of people interested in great food and bread and the techniques needed to produce them. I enjoy the multicultural exchange about it all because noone has THE answer to all.

Oh, and all my left over sourdough bread goes to horses and when they see it coming they are VERY happy! So, no pain perdu for us either!

Well, after lots of thinking about bread in the last few days, I've decided to do a great bake-off on my blog and a bunch of readers are going to do testing on different breads and then we're going to share our experiments/ideas, etc. The first bread we are going to attack is the San Francisco sourdough!!! They don't know it yet, but I'll be posting it shortly. I can't wait to see what they think about it since they're French for the most part. It'll be fun to get a bunch of French bakers doing an American classic. I'll share the results with you or you can come visit.

Sour or not to be sour... that is the question!

Ha ha! 

Jane 

Aside from being pleasantly surpised I could read all that in french (had to turn back into a 10-year old), I was rather intrigued at the idea you brought up of HOW people eat bread and why SF's sour taste would no go over well in other cultures where bread isn't mainly a method of holding sandwich contents together.

Thanks Jane for that nice glimpse into French culture.

BTW, what's a "map"? It's mentioned a few times in a couple of people's posts but the context doesn't seem to help point out what it is.

[quote]On peu tout simplement mettre des ingrédients dans la map et faire tourner la machine et le pain[/quote]

Wait... on second glance: it's "Machine A (Au?) Pain", right?

--------
Paul

That's exactly what it is! Une machine à pain. French words and sentences are so long, they are FAMOUS for using ... oh what's the word... the first letters of a series of words to make it short (there goes my english!)

David, thanks for the links. I was thinking about it last night and I think I'd like to do a comparative test. Take two different San Fran recipes and get some people to do one and the others to do another one (whoever wants to do both can, hopefully most) and compare. It's Reinhart's recipe that drives me nut. But your insight is intersting. I never use T55 in bread. I use T65 which is still white but not as white and better for bread. I love the T80 and use it often in sourdough bread. It looks white too, but isn't.

I also looked at RL Beranbaum's recipe and that looks pretty darn time consuming. What do you think?

I'll check out the links. 

I know we can't make REAL San Fran sourdough as I keep reading in books, on the net... because we aren't THERE. But the resultas I've had from the recipe are pretty sour compared to pain au levain. So, I think the difference and discovery will still be very interesting! 

Thanks everyone,

Jane 

I enjoyed your blog post, Jane, and I do hope that I can continue to read it.  I appreciate that it was translated.

I'm a convicted, dedicated, Peter Reinhart fan, but I'm not offended by your comments, but rather, intrigued and fascinated by your observations.  When I stumbled upon my sourdough excursion I found myself sitting in the local library or the local bookstore, pouring over many a cookbook.  Several peaked my interest, but none made more sense to me than Peter's.   I found that Reinhart's, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, delivered the information best to my way of thinking.  It was a formulary that was easy for me to understand.  Within those pages I discovered a new direction with my baking, and this was my take:

Flour and water, plus time, would equal bread.  Manipulating these items would produce different results.  I would discover that part of the process of bread making was the journey.  And this is how, and why, I am such a fan of Peter's.  My fear of all things yeasted, has ceased; no longer do I stare at a bag of flour and wonder, "Can I do this?" 

Joy!  It's pure and it's simple for me.  As with Mr. Reinhart's work, so it will be with yours, and the others that continue to discourse upon these bits and pieces.  I am so happy we have all found one another.  May our loaves bring our journey to a peaceful and mindful place. 

Thanks for sharing.

I wrote a post yesterday after David's last post and it didn't make it here! Oh well...now what did I say?

I've never heard of anyone making a big deal about the different taste in regional sourdough here (though I'm no expert). It's the recipe's that change. And other than real epicuriens, most people do NOT eat pain au levain because it is too expensive. Most bakeries will have a version, but if you look carefully, it is a rarely a real sourdough. Some artisinal bakeries and pretty much all organic bakeries do a real pain au levain and it costs 6 euros à kilo (minimum price). I've seen it at 3 euros for 300g. So, few people actually eat it here! Yeast breads are by far the norm and with the price of flour going up, I can guess that it won't change!

But, I'm very suprised that the sourdough bread around where I live is so bland. I've had sourdough bread from three different local organic bakeries and none of them have a tangy taste. I'm going to try and get a guided tour one of these days so that I can see what they actually do. I'm sure they use pâte fermentée.

Paul - I thought about doing an experiment and ordering some San Fran starter. I also thought about calling the university and seeing if their science students could do an analysis of my sourdough. I live in a place/house where I literally can add water to flour and without touching it, bubbles in three days. I then feed it once a day for 3-4 days and there's my starter. I recently made a buckwheat starter and make gluten-free bread for a friend with it that is really good. So, I'm curious to know why it works so well here. A friend of mine down the road who lives in an apartment tried three times to get a starter going with no success. We used the same flour, water and technique. Very strange. I finally gave her some of mine. Anyway, I'd like to compare the results of two breads, one with mine and one with a San Fran. I'll post the results when I do it.

GrapevineTX- I'm NOT giving up on Reinhart because I remain convinced that there is something I'm missing and that is also the reason that I'm starting the test group. I have a beautiful San Fran sourdough that has come out of the fridge and will be baked in an hour. I've got y fingers crossed! I can't get his whole grain hearth bread to work from his whole grains book and that is driving me crazy. I agree with you that everything he says seems to make sense. But so far, I'm not convinced by the results and I have to figure out if it's because of the flour differences, etc.

What I'd like to figure out is why bread that is made with a prefermented dough, left in the fridge, then maybe another stay in the fridge after the dough is made really makes great bread. The straight method I use daily, with a liquid starter, makes the best darn bread I've ever tasted, including any true artisanal bread. The crust is perfect, the crumb holey and nicely chewy. That is what my quest is about! Why add all these steps when simple can be best? (but then that's very subjective)

Cheers!

jane 

I hope you do get around to trying the way I make a basic bread. I would be so curious to know what you think!

Here's a further exlanation:

The liquid starter is fed in the evening, left on the table, covered. The next morning it'll be nice and bubbly.

In your mixing bowl, put 1 1/4 cups (300ml) water 

Take about 3/4 cups (150 g) of the starter and put it in the water.

Use 19,05 oz of flour (540g). I don't know what they makes in cups. For my favorite bread I use 400 g white (T65) with 140 g white spelt. Otherwise try with all white or white with a bit of whole wheat (not much) or rye (which make a nice pain de campagne).

Your flour is so different that you really have to keep an eye on this consistency. The dough will be very supple, but shouldn't spread (but not as firm as the Reinhart sourdough which I found really firm before the first rise).

5-6 hours first rise. Shape and then the proofing really depends on the temps. Sometimes as little as two hours, but sometimes longer. I sprinkle flour on the bread to rise and cover it with a cotton cloth napkin.

Oven at 410°C (210°C). Throw in a cup of hot water in the tray but don't spritz the bread! 

35 min. in the oven until it's a nice color and sounds hollow.

http://aulevain.canalblog.com/archives/2008/03/28/8512355.html

There's a picture on the blog page. 

This is the bread that my husband keeps telling me to come back to. As you say, the liquid starter is much sourer and in a bread with a straight method the flavor is just sour enough. So it's not bland but not overpowering. 

I have a series of starters right now because of my experiments and no more room in the fridge! I also bought some fresh yeast from the baker yesterday and am making some baguettes on poolish for lunch. I'm so in to sourdough that I never make yeast breads. So, now I'd like to try! Luckily I have so many mouths to feed.

Jane 

I read something about high extraction flour but didn't really understand what it was. Now I get it! Yah, flours are just different! Your idea of mixing the three sound good to me. The other day I had some bags with flour that I didn't even know what it was (I buy bulk at the organic store). I wanted to finish off the bags. It looked pretty whole wheat. I mixed to ends of bags in with quite a bit of T65 and the bread was excellent! So, what I'm saying is that anything goes, in my opinion!

I didn't DARE add more water because I did the first times as I found the dough was so firm, but then as the starter gets to work it all spreads out! Terrible. So, I left as is and it came out beautifully. I'll try and do a blog entry when I have some time. I still don't like it as much as my regular bread. It's the firm starter thing that ruins all the taste for us (everyone in the house says the same thing!). I'll do a three day one very soon. 

For the holes, I get big ones in my regular bread but not with the Reinhart method... weird!

I'll go check out your link.