Guest Post: Victory Loaves

It's quickly becoming bread-baking week around here. In other, fantastic news, Barack Obama is our President-elect! In honor of bread and Barack, I bring you this victoriously educational guest post from my friend Glenn.


A great candidate deserves a great bread because, well, man does not live by presidential politics alone.

I baked these victory loaves on Monday morning, adapting the sourdough recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. The scoring was done with a serrated knife. The sourdough starter I use is a bit wetter than Reinhart and others suggest, so I used a little less water than recommended. I used the Joy of Cooking recipe to get my sourdough starter started. Now I keep it in the refrigerator (in an old applesauce jar) and refresh it about once a week with:

1/2 c. flour
1/4 c. water

A few notes on sourdough starters: First, this isn't as hard as some folks make it sound. Yeast is in the air and on the flour grains; when combined with water, it will wake up and eat away. Any sourdough starter recipe should work--the simpler the better, if you ask me. Also, any sourdough starter can work for any sourdough recipe, though you might have to make adjustments to the water ratio. For example, my starter is quite wet, so I err on the side of less water when mixing the final dough.

Once every month or so, I refresh the starter with whole-wheat flour instead of wheat. This tends to the give the final bread a nuttier flavor.

If you forget about refreshing, don't worry. It should perk up, unless you haven't fed the starter in over a month.

Most importantly, I've found that 4 hours after refreshing is the best time to start the bread using your sourdough starter. If the starter is too hungry or too full, it won't rise correctly.

Thanks to Becky for asking me for this guest post.