So you have your sour starter sleeping in the fridge, the miracle grown from just a spoonful of flour and water, or bought online and looked after attentively.
Perhaps you have your tried and tested recipe for daily bread (even if you can only bake it once a fortnight). Or maybe you have a whole range of recipes and use sourdough in everything from pancakes to pasta (allegedly)? But everyone can always learn something new and that applies to cooks especially – as I know best.
So take a look at my handful of excellent and varied recipes that use a sourdough starter or fermented dough. And the first one includes how to make very good sourdough starter from scratch.
Tartine style sourdough country bread recipe inspired by the world-famous San Francisco Tartine bakery, including recipe for starter made from scratch. I promise: it's absolutely worth the time and the effort.
My go-to recipe, hence called the one and only sourdough bread recipe. This is not your average bread - it's a masterpiece of crusty goodness and complex, tangy flavours of a loaf that's truly exceptional.
Seelen means souls in German, and in Schwabia it means fantastically tasty spelt sourdough bread rolls, rustic and completely artisan.
Borodinsky bread is Russian rye sourdough, with its history going back to Napoleonic wars. Great for gut health and amazingly tasty, this rye sourdough loaf is named after the battle of Borodino.
The history of the San Francisco sourdough bread goes back to the California Gold Rush of the late 19th century and it started a great tradition in the city, as shown in the first recipe of this collection. This one is a little different, with yoghurt-based starter.
San Francisco sourdough
RECIPE
One of my favourites although it does require some effort, being traditionally kneaded by hand. Pain Poilâne, whole grain stoneground sourdough bread aka miche, is a large rustic loaf made with natural sourdough leavening.
Poilâne style sourdough
RECIPE
Sourdough baguettes on wheat starter are rich in flavour, fermenting over 36 hours. They taste like baguettes à l’ancienne from a French boulangerie, and just look at those air bubbles!
In this one you don’t even need a sourdough starter: this is bread leavened with wild yeast water made from fermented dried figs. Pure magic. Possibly the most organic, natural and fascinating way of creating food. It’s no longer fermentation – it’s alchemy.
Sourdough doesn’t only mean crackling crust and slices that don’t fit in the toaster. This is soft crust sourdough sandwich bread baked in a large loaf tin. It's square, it's sliceable and it's sourdough, a flavoursome tender loaf with soft and chewy crust.
Sourdough sandwich loaf
RECIPE
Pumpkin and sunflower seeded rye sourdough, German style blonde Pumpernickel – truly upping the ante on fibre! Sourdough based on a rye starter with only a small addition of wheat flour which can be swapped for spelt.