Day 17: Mar. 22

A Day to BAKE

Transformational Food

The popularity of baking sourdough bread rose to new heights during 2020 as we stayed home and sought comfort in the ordinary. For some, baking sourdough continues to be essential for their ongoing spiritual transformation.

You see, ultimately, bread is a transformational food. The transfiguration of tasteless flour into dough and eventually bread, that emerging from the oven, looks nothing like what goes into it. That’s not a coincidence. The baker engages deeply with this transformation process. When you think about it, baking bread is a spiritual practice in and of itself.

There is a corollary between the process of spiritual transformation and fermentation. Fermentation in bread, whether thanks to commercial yeast or carefully tended sourdough, is special. It makes the bread possible.

Fermentation is a process that reveals that holiness. Caring for sourdough starter is an opportunity to know more intimately how sacred the stuff of our lives is, right down to the bacteria and yeast that make ordinary bread extraordinary. Even dormant, starter is alive, always beckoning us back to a practice that changes things. - - from Brother Juniper’s Bread Book: Slow Rise as Method and Metaphor.

Sourdough - from Lee Wheeler

Ingredients and Supplies

1/3 cup + ½ Tbsp Sour Dough Starter See Day 14 for a simple seven day starter
1 cup + 1 Tbsp Water
1 ¼ tsp Salt
3 ⅛ cup Bread Flour
Rice Flour for bread form (Banneton)
1 Banneton (proofing basket)

Step 1: Measure out starter into a bowl. Add water, salt and bread flour. Mix until ingredients are well blended into a very sticky dough. Cover with aluminum foil; let rest 4 hours at 70-75 degrees.

Step 2: With wet hands, fold dough over on itself 3-4 times. Cover with foil and allow dough to ferment for 2 more hours.

Step 3: Generously dust a bread form with rice flour (set aside). Scrape dough out onto a lightly floured work surface (can use bread flour or all-purpose flour). Shape into a ball with a smooth, unbroken surface, using just enough flour on the surface to keep it from sticking. Transfer smooth-side down to banneton. Pinch together the rougher edges of the surface toward the center to smooth them and maintain the round ball shape. Cover and refrigerate 12 hours to slow the fermentation process.

Step 4: Remove loaf from the refrigerator and let it rise in a warm spot until the dough springs slowly back and retains a slight indentation when poked gently with a finger, about 3-5 hours.

Step 5: Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Dust surface of dough with flour. Gently invert banneton over the baking sheet and transfer dough onto parchment paper. Gently brush off excess rice flour. Score the top of the dough about ⅛ inch deep with a sharp knife to create a shallow slit running across the center. Mist entire surface lightly with water.

Step 6: Bake in the center of a preheated oven until beautifully browned, 25-30 minutes. When finished, transfer to a rack to cool completely (do not slice loaf while it is still warm).