Getting the Sour in Sourdough – Salt Fermentation

In many parts of the world, a very sour sourdough is considered a fault in the bread baking. However, here in the USA, it is usually considered a virtue.  At the sourdough forum, we are having fun with a new board set up just for experimenting with “getting the sour” in sourdough. Anyone can join, you just have to ask for a password. The password will be removed when my book, “Discovering Sourdough” is posted. That is because the formula is part of the book, kind of like a preview.

I say posted because I am going to offer it as a free download sometime this month. I have divided it into three parts, because it is so large, and will offer it as a .pdf download from my site: http://www.northwestsourdough.com .  The publishers I submitted it to all liked it and it got to the aquisition stage at each publisher’s (that is supposed to be hard to do).

However, they said it was either too technical for what is in demand today or that there are too many bread books on the market right now (which is true). I don’t know Oprah personally or I might have had some success getting this book published 🙂

I have promised this book to you for years, so I decided  you should have it. It has been five years in the making and two years being submitted to publishers. I will post here to let you know when it is available. So check back often this month. I thank those of you who have encouraged me along the way, especially Peter Reinhart who has been very supportive and Ray Glaze, whose help with programming has been invaluable to me.

Now back to the “sour” in sourdough. The formula I have been experimenting with this week has yielded these results:

The batch of dough was divided into three and baked on subsequent days, each loaf was more sour each day and the dough did not turn into glue.

That is because it is the Salt Fermented Technique I have been teasing you with for over a year. Yes, if you join the board, you can participate in experimenting with the Salt Fermented Sourdough Formula(or just follow it).

The loaf above was baked first and it was a 0 out of 10 for sour flavor.  0/10

The next loaf was from the same batch but fermented an additional day and this is the result:

It received a 3/10 for sour flavor.

The last loaf was the most sour at about 6/10 a few hours after baking (I expect the sour flavor to develop futher until tomorrow) It was fermented even one more day from the same initial batch.

So you see the technique is great because you can have several loaves of bread over several days from the same batch of sourdough and the dough does not turn into glue. The salt fermented technique has been the most fun of any of the experimenting that I have done with the whole book. I think you will find it to be a lot of fun. So go see what is going on at the Sourdough Forum and get baking! You will find the formula there for Salt Fermented Sourdough.

Don’t forget to check back and see where and when you can download my book, Discovering Sourdough.

Have fun baking everyone.

Submitted to Yeastspotting