Sourdough breads in the bakery

(published February 2000)

Every time I try to get bakers to use a naturally fermented sour starters, I hear the odd whine of how difficult they are to maintain. What cock and bull! Speak to bakers who use sour starters and they will tell you the reverse. Start and maintain a sourdough starter of your own - it really is a trouble free way to add flavour and character to your bread. It’s not an additive you need to buy, nor does it entirely replace compressed yeast in the bakery, and, better still, using it will enable your bakers to gain a better understanding of the flavour that can be achieved with long process doughs. Wait up, I’ll qualify this. You need to be organised follow methods exactly, check temperatures, and repeat the routine each and every day. If this is a little too difficult, what in the world is going on in your bakery?

I’ve been helping a friend at his bakery, producing large 1.2 kg white sourdoughs with a crisp crust, a fragrant and slightly acidic taste and a light open texture. Lately people have been going mad for sourdough, and he can’t make enough of them. He uses what he calls a levain, though probably more accurately should be called a poolish or sponge. Though the term levain is often casually used to refer to any bakery ferment, it more correctly describes the method used in France of old dough added with or in place of compressed yeast. For his use, it’s basically a sponge mixed without yeast and left at room temperature for several days to spontaneously ferment.

Once this occurs, a quantity of sponge is removed for doughing at 4pm, and mixed very slowly with cold water and a blend of strong whole-wheat and white flour for 15 minutes on first speed. This dough is left for a cold prove until 10 pm, scaled/shaped up and left upturned in cloth lined baskets to be baked at around 4am. The ferment is refreshed with a similar quantity of flour and water, kept at room temperature throughout the night, and the next day the process is repeated.

It’s a strict routine, but excellent bread is only ever produced by organised and careful method. And we did have our own tradition of using naturally fermented starters in this country. I have to remind you of a little of our own history. Before the widespread use of compressed yeast around the 1900’s, both spontaneously fermented and stock-set sponges were common. Even after the ease of commercially prepared yeasts became popular, older bakers at the time talked of a loss of flavour, preferring the stock and sponge method they had used with success in the past. But these ferments were difficult to keep from souring, often producing an unevenly aerated and beige coloured crumb, a problem as the prevailing taste was for sweet, white even-textured bread.

As we chased the soft white loaf during the last century, many of our good traditions were lost. From once being leaders in craft baking excellence, we reached a point where we couldn’t see beyond the short-time dough. Now we have customers asking for a sour loaf with an open texture and cream coloured crumb. We strove over the past hundred years to produce the whitest, softest, sweetest loaves we could, and now the public want the opposite. Grab this moment - all the supermarkets, food service managers, and retailers are crying out for premium breads with strong flavour, additive and preservative free. This is a chance to show the very best we can make.