I started making sourdough when the rest of the world discovered it too, in 2020. This was the first time I stopped for long enough to make anything time-intensive. The empty hours stretched before me and I filled the gaping hole that had been my social calendar with the chewy, glutinous miracle that is a fresh loaf of sourdough.
The crispy, crunchy exterior. The chewy, slightly tangy interior. From slightly over/under baked to over-proved, sourdough bread is always delish.
Sourdough is one example of the function of time in cooking and baking. Sourdough without time and attention is a lumpy pile of flour, water, and salt. Where we direct our energy we flourish. We build. We create something from nothing.
I’ve included my overview of all the steps for how to make sourdough at the bottom of this post.
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING
I’ve been going ham on Alison Roman’s Something From Nothing, which came out at the end of last year.
When I say this cookbook is amazing, I’m not exaggerating. And I’ve seen my way around a number of cookbooks in my day (which makes me sound positively ancient).
Her premise for the book is simple: recipes you can make from nothing. Recipes where you have everything in stock and on hand like canned tomatoes, canned anchovies (something I’m coming around to). What her newest cookbook does is take the daunting task of making dinner at home during the week and make it more feasible while still remaining delicious.
What you don’t give up in these recipes is flavor, the sheer joy and indulgent experience of sitting and eating a meal that you made at home. What you gain is time back.
I cannot tell you how many recipes we’ve made in just a month and a half. But every single one has been easy and packs a huge punch. Some highlights:
- kimchi tomato soup with soft egg and rice
- mushroom with orzo and butter
- roasted potatoes with lemon and garlic (heads up: she uses a lot of garlic)
- turmeric chicken with crushed olives (very reminiscent of Moroccan tagine).
I always take notes in my cookbooks so that, when I go back to make it again, it’s an easier path to better and easier the next time.
The pasta recipes of this book (because it doesn’t have a chocolate chip cookie for me to start with) served as a litmus test for me to guess how good it would be overall. Start with the caramelized shallot pasta, which is so. dumb. good. Or the eggplant tomato pasta à la pasta alla nonna. You can’t go wrong with pasta!
One bold choice about this one that I enjoy thoroughly, even though I’m a dessert fiend, is it doesn’t have a dessert section. I kind of love that it leans into these extremely savory recipes.
Alison Roman has been on the scene for a long time, food blogging, writing for the New York Times, publishing multiple cookbooks. Something from Nothing is a wonderful, ooey gooey warm hug of a book of recipes that will become staples in your routine. And this is coming from us! We tend to cook new recipes every single week as opposed to re-making old staples. It’s rare that we repeat a recipe. So for me to say that you should make and remake the recipes from this book should tell you something.
If you take away nothing else from this whole piece, the caramelized shallot pasta may just change your life. You’re welcome.
Step 1: The Starter
Everything begins with a sourdough starter, which is a natural leaven that’s essentially air, flour, and water plus time. You can buy a starter from your local bakery or make your own. My husband’s starter has been alive for over a decade. He started it in Austin, and though it’s not technically the exact same (that would be gross), we’ve kept it going all these years.
We keep ours in the fridge to avoid having 40 mason jars of overflowing starter take over our kitchen. Every couple weeks when we want to make bread we take it out the day before and feed it with equal parts water and flour: 20 grams of each. The next day, the starter is bubbly and ready to become leaven.
Step 2: The Process
To make your leaven, mix together:
- 100 g flour (50 g whole wheat flour, 50 g bread)
- 100 g water
- 25 g starter
Let this mixture sit in a warm place for at least four hours. It will become this stiff, bubbly mixture that barely budges when you turn the bowl.
Then comes the final mix:
- 1,000 grams of flour (we use Type 65 flour, but you can do 700 grams bread flour and 300 grams whole wheat flour)
- 570 grams of water
- All your leaven.
This is where things get messy; gloriously, inevitably messy. You’ll want to get your hands sticky. I keep a silicone bench scraper nearby because the dough will be too sticky to pull off your hands yourself.
What you create is called a shaggy mess. It won’t look anything close to resembling bread. That’s to be expected.
After about 30 minutes of rest, you’ll add 20 grams of salt and 100 grams of additional water.
Then, every 30 minutes for the two hours, you’ll perform a series of folds. These folds and half-hour rest periods build structure. This structural gluten network will give your bread its chewy texture and open crumb. Each time you return to fold, the dough transforms from a shaggy mess into something smooth and elastic.
Step 3: The Overnight Ferment
After your final fold, you’ll pre-shape the dough into two rough oblong rounds, let them rest for 30 minutes, then do your final shape. I fold the dough like a letter meeting in the middle, roll it into a little burrito, and pinch the seams together like suturing. Then into the bannetons — those woven basket shapes lined with cotton — they go. Place your dough in the fridge to rest overnight.
You don’t have to do an overnight ferment, but I find the chew and texture of the bread is better when it has a moment to ferment in the fridge. Plus, it’s usually late by this point, and I’m ready to be done for the day.
Step 4: The Bake
The next morning, preheat your oven to 500ºF with your bread oven inside. Turn the cold dough out onto your bread mat (the pinched side goes down), score the top with your lame (pronounced lah’m) down the middle to give the bread space to rise and open as it bakes.
Add two ice cubes to the bread oven for steam, cover with the bread oven’s lid, and bake at 500ºF for 25 minutes. Then, remove the lid, drop the temperature to 425ºF, and continue baking for another 15 minutes until it’s done.
At the end of this (almost 24-hour) process you have two loaves of sourdough bread. The crust crackles. It cuts like butter when it’s still warm. The crumb structure is tight and beautiful.
Yum!
Whether it’s a yoga retreat I built in Morocco, France, or Turkey or it’s a painting that I add to over weeks and months, I crave focused, long-term projects. I approach my yoga practice in the same way. Each of these are projects that will last a lifetime. The dedication I must apply to each of these projects brings me back to presence, to reality one-and-over again.
Is there anything more mindful?
Until next time, butter babes
xx
Sarah
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