Baking with sourdough

How long can a sourdough starter go unused? That was what I wondered the other week when I happened across my own sourdough starter which had sat unused at the back of our second fridge (the one in the shed) for at least a year, perhaps longer.


My sourdough starter was created according to the recipe set out in Fergus Henderson’s second book which he co-wrote with his pastry chef (and also head baker) at St John, Justin Piers Gellatly (Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II). They call it the ‘Mother’; we call it the ‘Science Experiment’. I’ve used it before to make a sourdough loaf but there’s not much else that I’ve done with it. In their book, Henderson and Gellatly say that they started theirs “about five years ago”, and that was in 2007, but they use and replenish theirs on a regular basis. They do say that “you can leave it in the fridge without feeding for months” – but a year or more? Well, I followed their advice – “it will take a few days to restart it by feeding it … discard about a third and feed it equal parts flour and water. Repeat this until there are signs of fermentation.” When it’s ready, the starter “should be bubbly and smell strong and sour”.

After several days of reviving, it looked bubbly enough, and stank enough, to be used and so I made another sourdough loaf.

Only afterwards did I peruse my copy of Beyond Nose to Tail to see what else I could make, and I chanced across a recipe for raisin loaf. This required a few things that I didn’t have, so a trip to the shops was called for in order to get some raisins, currants, unsalted butter, more strong white flour (that sourdough loaf had used up the last of it) and fresh yeast.

Putting aside the fact that the whole point of sourdough bread is that you don’t need yeast, why would it need fresh yeast? And where could I buy that? I’ve only ever used the dried stuff, and for a while I did ponder the notion that, somewhere on the Inter-web, someone has probably come up with a chart that tells you how much of the dried stuff you should use when the recipe calls for fresh. Baking, though, is a bit of an exact science – in other forms of cooking, you can go a bit off-piste but you really can’t with baking – so I decided that I might as well get hold of some fresh yeast; although the recipe only called for half a teaspoon of it I was sure I could use it for something else.

My first port of call was a big branch of Morrison’s, where after initially being directed to where the dried stuff was in the baking section I was told that they did sell the fresh stuff, which could be found next to the butter. I found the label on the shelf all right, but no yeast – they were out of stock and hadn’t had any delivered for a while. I bought the rest of my goods and drove over to the nearest other supermarket – an even bigger Tesco. After looking in and around the butter section without success, I asked a passing worker and was told that I should “ask at the bakery counter, they might give you some”. They did, too – and for no charge (since I didn’t need to buy anything else there, I walked out as discreetly as I could, having for once got something for nothing). So there you have my baking lesson for the week: It’s possible to buy fresh yeast at Morrison’s, but Tesco will give you the stuff for free.

The dough, once mixed (with the currants and the raisins) was rather wet although Henderson and Gellatly had forewarned of this (“Your dough will be very wet and hard to handle, so good luck, and remember – try not to add too much flour”). I duly rolled it into a ball, left it in the fridge for an hour, then kneaded away and left the result in a warm place – in a bowl on top of a hot water bottle to be precise. They recommended leaving it for “about 3 hours, until it has risen a little”.

Mine had risen by more than a little within the hour, so I duly re-shaped and bunged the dough into my (buttered) loaf-tin and popped that back on the hot water bottle. After another rising, it went in the oven. The only odd part of the whole process came right at the end; after taking it out of the oven, Henderson and Gellatly said to “take the loaf out of the tin, lay it on its side on the oven shelf and bake for 5 minutes”, and then do the same for the other side. Well, if it’s in the instructions, that’s what you do, right?

The result: A delicious raisin loaf. Goes well with goat’s or ewe’s milk cheese, apparently.

Meatopia

“The problem with vegetarians is that they’re eating my food’s food.” Christian Stevenson, a.k.a. ‘DJ BBQ’, as quoted at Meatopia, London, 7^th September 2013

Yesterday, we went to the Docklands – Tobacco Dock down Shadwell way to be precise – for Meatopia, which promised to be a carnivorous experience to remember. Meatopia, which as the name suggests is a foodie festival concerning all things meat-related – has been going for nine years in the USA (it was founded by the food writer Joshua Ozersky) but this was the first time it had come to London. I expected good things. Many good things.

On entering, we were greeted by a lot of smoke. The old warehouses of Tobacco Dock are partly covered, and with a couple-of-dozen barbecues on the go (one of Meatopia’s principal guarantees is that all of the meat served is cooked with wood or hardwood charcoal, no butane, propane etc allowed), the atmosphere was smoky to say the least. I got the distinct impression that the organisers hadn’t thought everything through – but it could’ve been worse, I’ve been to foodie events in parks that have been wash-outs thanks to the weather, and at least we were on solid ground here.

Glimpses of foodie heroes could be seen; Fergus Henderson was there, and Daniel Young (no relation) of Burger Monday fame was on the stage for an early Q&A session, while Jay Rayner seemed to have adopted an almost-furtive pose in a flat cap. My sometime butchery tutor Nathan Mills was on hand too, helping out on the main stand (a.k.a. ‘The Cutting Room’).

We started with a coffee; not just any coffee but a blend of Ethiopian, Brazilian and Kenyan coffee courtesy of Climpson Estates. Now I used to be the kind of philistine who would deliberately ask for Nescafe when I went into a branch of Starbucks or Costa Coffee, but in recent years I have come to appreciate good coffee and I am particularly fond of Ethiopian coffee, probably a direct result of having travelled in that country. My yardstick nowadays is that if it’s good enough, you don’t need to add milk and this blend passed that test with flying colours.

Following that, we split up to sample what we wanted to sample of the various barbecue stands that were giving off that tantalising smoky smell.

Tayyabs, the legendary Pakistani curry-house in Whitechapel, was doing their Chargrilled Lamb Chops (“marinated overnight using a 40 year old secret recipe”), which I passed on the grounds that I last dined there, and had the lamb chops among other things, less than a month ago and I was looking for something different at Meatopia.

Which was why I made a beeline for the St John barbecue, and not just because they did not appear to have much of a queue (although God only knows why). St John being St John, they’d gone for an offal offering of Ox Heart Bun. I wanted to start my culinary experience of Meatopia by having something I would not normally eat, and ox heart definitely falls into this category. The heart, so the man on the stall told me, had been marinated for 36 hours in a garlic and balsamic mixture before being grilled, and then allowed to stand in its own juices. I’m not much of a balsamic fan, but the meat stood out against all the flavour to create a wonderful eating experience.

Next up was the Wild Game Company. Now I happened to be walking past this stall when Andy, the kilt-clad head honcho of this most Scottish of meat ventures, came over and said hello to my dad. They knew each other from Broadway Market in Hackney, where until recently Dad sold the finest Cheshire cheese a couple of stalls along from the Wild Game people. When Allison and I stood in for Dad on the stall, we did spend some of our takings on their venison! Andy’s people were offering Venison Steak Frites with a spicy mayonnaise, and venison as part of steak-frites was a new one on me, so I went for it. It was lovely – my only critique is that I’d’ve liked more venison!

My next objective was to get a drink. Beer was courtesy of the Meantime Brewing Company, the Greenwich-based microbrewery who do a great Pale Ale, and their lager’s not so bad either (I say this as a dedicated real ale drinker).

The highlight of the day was without a shadow of a doubt the butchery demonstration by Dario Cecchini, the legendary butcher of Panzano whose restaurants Allison and I have visited on more than one occasion. To Dario, butchery is not a job but a way of life, and via his wife (who’s American; she did the translating), he espoused his philosophy on life – as he put it, “a story of hunger, intelligence and know-how” in which the butcher, who is the “most delicate link in the chain of food”, is at the centre of the community he serves. This was impressive enough, but this man did this while butchering a pig half-carcass and giving out information on what to do with the trotters (in Tuscany one can apparently be used to feed ten people) and the head (head cheese, a.k.a. brawn). With Dario as with Fergus Henderson, whom he hailed as a culinary hero, nothing is wasted.

The centrepiece of Dario’s demonstration was the porchetta, the central cut of the pig that starts four ribs down from the head. After deboning it with ease, this was rubbed with salt (not just any old salt but his own finely-ground herb-infused salt), fennel pollen (which represents summer, thus making this dish a combination of the seasons given that in Tuscany pork is representative of winter because that’s when the pigs are usually butchered) and rosemary (a symbol of “peace, and the love of good food”). It’s then rolled and roasted.

Apparently, porchetta thus cooked was served up to a summit between Orthodox and Catholic religious bigwigs in Florence in the early fifteenth century, and on tasting it one of the Orthodox delegation declared it to be ‘aristos’, which in Greek means ‘the best’. According to Dario, although this did not manage to resolve the Great Schism, it did lead to six years of peace between the two rival factions of Christianity! To this day, this dish is still called arista alla Fiorentina in Tuscany in honour of this feast.

While he’d been doing this, a ready-prepared porchetta joint had been roasting away, and this was cut up for us punters. Allison managed to get hold of some, and it was lovely, the herb combination combining very well with the pork.

The only problem was with the suggested wine pairing with this amazing dish. One of the sponsors was Casillero del Diablo, and although I have nothing against South American wines (they're lovely, honest!) I did think that saying that arista alla Fiorentina is best paired with a wine that happens to have their label on the bottle was a bit of a cop-out. Personally, I can think of nothing other than Chianti as the perfect accompaniment to anything Dario Cecchini serves up. But hey, that’s just my opinion.

Dario was followed on the main stage by another cookery demo, this time concerning beef that had been cured using salt from the Himalayas. My one-time tutor was on hand to cut the T-bone joints for the barbecue, courtesy of another of Meatopia’s sponsors (and who else but a barbecue company would you expect to sponsor this meat-fest?). 

The resulting meat was truly one of the best examples of barbecued steak I’ve ever tasted, although I could only get a couple of pieces from when they handed out samples to the crowd.

By late afternoon, some of the stalls were running low or running out of their food, causing long queues at the stalls that were left as punters were still hungry and keen to offload their ‘meatbucks’ tickets. Some people, and I’d not care to name names, evidently had not planned for the number of people who did show up. A lesson for future events here, I think. To their credit, Shake Shack had a plan B which consitsted of pork sausage to replace the sold-out pork belly, topped with an American cheese sauce and chopped cherry peppers. Now that is a topping I’d like to replicate.

But the biggest queue of them all was for Almost Famous’s Run BMC Burger, “a chuck, marrow and brisket patty with BBQ salt n pepper pretzel beef rib, pork cracking, crumbled beef monster munch [yes, really], peppercorn mustard cream mayo and a tangy beef stock beer BBQ jus dip”. 

We queued, and queued. And stayed in the queue. We saw them send someone to stand at the back of the queue to stop anyone else from joining it. One of us went to get more drinks, which led to a longer trip than expected as some of the bars had apparently ran out of drinks! We saw the smoke from the barbecue.

We sent one of our party to the front to ascertain that there were still enough burgers left (there were). Allison contacted Daniel Young on Twitter to check if the burger was worth the wait. We befriended the people next to us in the line, who shared the bounty of their goodie-bags (including a very quaffable Chilean merlot).

Then, after two minutes short of two hours, we made it to the front and were rewarded with our burgers. Anticipation, already running at record levels, was heightened by our bearing witness to the preparation line. We’d certainly earned them!

The burgers were, by the way, delicious. London does have a bit of a gourmet burger scene going on at the moment, and these were up there with the best.

After savouring our burgers, we took in the post-prandial atmosphere – the smell of the barbecue pervading throughout, and the ska band on stage adding to an end-of-the-party atmosphere – before heading off into the London night.

All in all, this was an event to be remembered and I’m very glad we went. Although there were a few teething troubles that are no doubt due to this being Meatopia’s first event in this country, I fully expect that Meatopia will return, and that these little problems will have been sorted out when it does so.

Making bread

For several years I have experimented in making my own bread. I think it’s the kneading that I like the most – it’s rather therapeutic. Plus, I’m the sort of home cook who likes to follow recipes to the letter, so I am OK with baking. Unfortunately, though, the bread-making process is not a regular event for me as it tends to require a full day when I’ll be at home for some if not most of the time, what with the whole thing about waiting for four or five hours before I can do the next stage. It’s something that has to be reserved for those weekends when we’re not really doing anything else.

My forays into break-making started a few years ago when I found a fairly straightforward white bread recipe in Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course and wondered how hard it could be to make a loaf of bread for my sandwiches rather than buying one. I subsequently progressed to specialist baking tomes such as Richard Bertinet’s Dough (which contained a step-by-step guide, with photos, about how to knead bread properly), making such delights as walnut bread, dark rye bread and rock salt and rosemary focaccia.

My masterpiece was épi de blé, a rustic version of the French stick that Allison clipped from a copy of Canadian Living, which goes very well with soup, although I also do a mean kolach at Christmas.

Things stepped up a gear a couple of years ago, with the acquisition of Beyond Nose to Tail. This is the second volume of the legendary Fergus Henderson’s cookbook, and it’s the one with the baking chapter .

For those who don’t know, Fergus Henderson is credited with having revived the concept of nose-to-tail eating in the 1990s. His view is that, having killed the animal, making sure that you make use of all of it is the decent and polite thing to do. As such, many of his recipes are devoted to doing all sorts of things with offal. Now I have always liked liver and am ready to give any cut of meat a go, but I must confess that I find Henderson to be a bit hard-core; I’d never even heard of chitterlings before I read his book (pig intestines, in case you were wondering). His main restaurant, St John, is appropriately located just around the corner from Smithfield Market and is highly recommended (order the bone marrow and parsley salad).

Naturally, Fergus Henderson’s people make their own bread. As one would expect, the chapter on baking isn’t for novices. Henderson’s was the first book I came across that seriously advocated sourdough, that naturally leavened bread made from a living, breathing starter – meaning you don’t need to buy yeast. The flip-side is that this involves making (creating?) the starter a week before you can actually begin to use it to make some bread.

Henderson refers to the starter as ‘the Mother’ (with capital ‘M’), although Allison and I prefer to call it ‘the science experiment’. It’s been with us for two years now, and is in fact the only one of three science experiments that I’ve undertaken in our flat that is still in existence; of the other two, sloe gin made with actual sloe berries was an unqualified success, and home-made lime pickle was an absolute disaster (that was from Floyd on Africa, and as I followed the recipe to the letter I suspect the great man may have been drinking when he wrote it).

Getting back on topic, the only problem I have found is that since this starter has come into existence, I have hardly made any other type of bread. The starter, after all, is sitting in the fridge waiting to be used. It’d be rude not to.

Anyway – the bread. But not quite, for if it hasn’t been used for a while the starter needs to be ‘woken’ a day in advance. This is done by taking it out of the fridge, adding flour and water and then leaving it for 24 hours. If it’s bubbling after this time, it has woken and can be used.

Making a loaf of bread is an all-day affair, so first thing in the morning (well, second thing – a cup of tea comes first) it’s time to fire up the stand-mixer and use the dough-hook implement to mix the starter with flour (strong bread flour preferred) and water.

Henderson’s is the only cook-book I have so far come across that advocates adding a ‘bathe’ to the dough after it’s been mixed together. This basically means adding more water but, unlike the water that’s added first of all, this has to be cold and has to be added in three stages. I have no idea what it’s supposed to do, but it’s in the recipe so in it goes.

There follow a series of periods in which you’re best off going away and doing something else. It has to stand for 20 minutes before the salt can be added, then an hour in the fridge before kneading (my favourite part!) followed by three hours in a warm place. The phrase ‘hurry up and do nothing’ could’ve been coined for bread-making.

The shaping of the loaf comes next and that’s the bit I have trouble with. My efforts at free-standing loaves end up looking like blobs on a baking-sheet so I prefer to use a loaf tin.

Four or five hours later, it’s ready for the oven. A bowl of water at the bottom of said oven helps to form a better crust (who knew?), and after 40 minutes (taking the water out with ten to go), the lovely smell of freshly-baked bread pervades through the flat, and the bread is done!