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So, here’s a little shout out to my husband today, because for the first time in his life, all three of us girls here at Casa Clark are cycling. Good thing he has a man cave to go to when he gets home!

Yesterday, I wanted to try something new in the bread department, and I had seen the lovely Cheeseslave doing a rather in depth article on no-knead sourdough bread. I checked out the post, which you can find at Ann Marie’s Cheeseslave site, and I got really interested in the idea of making some bread that didn’t take so many steps and such intense labor to produce.  I want to use my time wisely and get a big return on investment, and I can’t deny the at the idea of less work and more play appealed to me.

I went on the internet searching for no-knead sourdough bread and I came upon this great Youtube video describing a no-knead sourdough bread made by Serene of the Above Rubies group.  The recipe seemed simple to follow, just mix up the flour, starter, salt, water and pummel a bit with a rolling pin or mash up with your hands for 10 minutes, put it in a greased pan and allow it to rise for 7 hours or overnight and then bake at 350. So, after watching the videos which you can find here:

and here:

So, I set out to create this recipe, but I wanted to cut it in half first, and quickly did the calculations, thinking, well, I don’t want to have four loaves if I don’t like the bread. This recipe is much different from my favorite whole wheat sourdough because it contains spelt and does not have any honey or butter/oil in it.

I didnt have fresh spelt flour, but I did have rye flour. My starter was also 100% whole wheat and I decided to give it a last feed with rye flour. It definitely perked up tremendously using the rye flour, and I would suggest to anyone who does not have a nice frothy bubbly starter to add in some rye flour a few times a week.

So, with a nice frothy starter, some rye flour and whole wheat, I set out to create these loaves of bread. Somewhere along the way, I got cocky and thought I could improvise, applying my knowledge of bread baking to improve upon a recipe I hadn’t even made yet. Yeah right!

I decided to autolyse the flour and water first before adding the starter. I let it sit mixed together for 5 hours while i went about my day. Autolysis is a great way to develop gluten without kneading in whole wheat breads to improve crumb. Of course, the problem here was that I had no idea how the original crumb was supposed to be, or if I would like it that way!

I then kneaded the starter in and had a blast mixing it up with my hands. I have to say, this part always makes me happy, getting my hands in the dough and really feeling the gluten strands developing. I loved it so much I plumb forgot to add in the salt! I also felt that the dough was too dry, because from the video it seemed like it should be wetter. Of course, Serene was mixing it with a rolling pin and not her hands, but I decided to add a bit of water to the mixture anyway.

After putting the dough in the pans, I slipped them into my oven to rise. As an after thought, I put some foil down in the bottom of the oven. I left the pans to rise overnight, and didn’t check them until I was ready to bake them. At this point, they were far past the 7 hours that Serene suggested, but I figured, the more rising the better.

As I opened the oven door and saw all the dough that had overflowed the pans and onto the foil, I was so thankful I had put the foil down in the first place! What a mess to clean up, and at that point, I almost dumped the pans in disgust. I persevered and got them cleaned up and back into the cold oven and turned it on to 350 F which is the temperature she said to bake it at for one hour. She didnt clarify if it should be a cold oven or preheated, but I figured that some of my recipes said start with a cold oven, so I figured why not?

After 1 and a half hours, the loaves looked more like rum cake than bread. One had fallen in the center and the other had a hard brown slick film on the top. I took them out after measuring an internal temperature of 180 F, but upon slicing them open the insides were still wet, though the crumb looked ok. I tasted a slice and almost threw up! It was SOOOOO sour from the extra rising and I couldn’t understand why it tasted so badly!

Over the next few hours, I contemplated this disaster. How come it hadnt ever firmed up? How come the dough had over flowed so badly, leaving huge relaxed puddles of buddly muck in my oven?

Then, I remembered another disaster I had had years ago when first making whole wheat pizza. I had made the dough, pulled it out on the pizza peel very easily and not thought twice about the fact that the gluten didn’t feel right. When I slid the pizza into the oven, it went right over the back of the baking stone and onto the oven coils and started a fire! I had to use the fire extinguisher, and after deconstructing that recipe realized that I had forgot to put the salt in! The salt somehow gives the dough body and keeps the gluten strands springy. I had done the same thing with the sourdough! Not only did the bread taste bad, but the dough had had no body!

So, today I am going to try to make this bread again. I am going to promise myself that I will follow the recipe and directions exactly because I want to have the bread come out like the lovely Serene says it will. I will add salt, I won’t be crazy and autolize, I will measure the ingredients exactly, I will only rise it for 7 hours and I will bake it in a 350 heated oven for 1 hour. If it comes out good, wonderful and then I can experiment. If it comes out badly, I know I did my best, tried again and realized the recipe is not for me.

My point in all this rambling is sometimes, because we have experience in cooking, we get cocky and we try to improvise before we even really know how a recipe is going to turn out. We have to have faith in the process and believe that the recipe author tested it thoroughly and knows the ins and outs of the recipe. We have to have enough patience to try it by the book the first time, and then add our own creative flair when we have completed the process of learning the first time.

Hopefully I will remember this lesson in the future, so I can avoid similar mistakes (remember the salt silly!). It’s also important to try a recipe or procedure more than once, because the learning curve is pretty steep in traditional cooking. Our great grandmother’s had their moms to show them how to do things, and most of us are learning from our friends, books, the internet and expect ourselves to be perfect the first time. We spoke about having patience with the real food process, but we also have to have patience with ourselves as we learn new things, make mistakes, adjust and try again.

I will let you know how the bread turns out tomorrow, when I will be posting here and also joining in with the lovely Kristen the Food Renegade and the Fightback Friday’s crew.

This article is a part of the learning experience that is Monthly Food Disasters at the Sick of Food website.

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