Snowstorm Sourdough, in which I learn air-kneading and humility

I'm just maniacal about air kneading

After watching this video about San Francisco baker Chad Robertson, Lu and I became increasingly fascinated with making our own sourdough bread. What really drew us in was Robertson’s idea that locally-made sourdough starters reflect the places, even the weather conditions, where they grow. Lately, I’ve felt my bread baking was taking on elements of a quest, tweaking and tuning my recipes in search of a loaf that is perfectly satisfying to us, and the idea that our sourdough could reflect the subtleties of our environment was very appealing.

We followed the instructions on Little House on the Plains to create a sourdough starter, which we left to bubble quietly, occupying the center of our attention in the kitchen despite its innocuous place atop the fridge. After five days, we were a little concerned about the starter. It had never turned into a foamy mass, but had acquired the characteristic sour smell and small bubbles through its first four days; on the fifth, it was no longer bubbling, and the scent was more subdued. We wondered if we should have “fed” it more during its formative period, but decided to soldier on.

It was the morning after the “thundersnow” paralyzed DC, and I had spent the previous 24 hours slithering around in an ambulance, feeling years shaved off my life every time my partner narrowly avoided sending us off the road. Lu had been without power the previous night, but with the lights and the oven back in working order, it was a perfect time to bake some bread infused with the local flavor of the storm.

Having had good luck with the starter recipe, I used Little House on the Plains’ sourdough bread recipe to prepare the dough. This was the first time I’d used weight-based measurements to calculate my ingredients, something I’d been meaning to do since I read somewhere that this is how real bakers do it.

Having punched and pounded my worries away on many a loaf of bread, I was a bit flummoxed by the recipe’s instructions to “air knead” the dough. It sounded like the iconic pizza-chef move of throwing the dough into the air, but Lu located this this instructional video and cleared up that misapprehension (it starts off slowly, but skip to around the 1:00 mark). If anything, this method is more satisfyingly violent, more of a release of pent-up aggression, than my usual dough-wrestling style of kneading.

My first attempts:

The chef in the instructional video advised that the dough should be body-slammed 600 times for a good knead; I fell far, far short of the goal. Nonetheless, the dough clearly grew more elastic and cohesive. After a couple air kneading sessions, it passed the “window test,” in which it stretched out to the point where I could see light behind it without the dough breaking.

Then we tucked it away for a long rise. We had also found the idea of a prolonged rise time oddly engaging, hoping it might lead to changes in flavor and texture that can’t be achieved through faster processes.

As in the original recipe, I saw no substantial rise in the first 5 hours, so I put the loaf in a warm oven and let it alone. We keep the house pretty cool in winter, so I wasn’t concerned about the slow activity. I was committed, even excited about a 12-hour rise.

We got up the next morning to find, as my wife put it, “this storm would have tasted like a flat puddle of flour and water at the bottom of a cold bread pan.”

I usually take bread failures pretty hard, but I remained philosophical about this one. The problem was probably the starter, which we may not have nourished well enough. The cold temperatures, worsened during the blackout, may not have helped. Regardless, there is already another starter perched atop the fridge, percolating, drinking in our local atmosphere, in which it will find no negativity, no sour feelings at lost loaves, just dreams of bread to come.