Sourdough Bread Baking 102 - Exploration
What you'll learn
- When this course is done, the student will learn to challenge standard ideas of baking methods and explore baking methods.
- You will learn to wash gluten, see what gluten and starch looks like, test the suitability of the flour you are using to bake bread and more!
- You will have several printable formulas for Ciabatta, sourdough pancakes and several hydration level sourdough breads.
- Have a better understanding of the stages of a sourdough starter.
- Learn a method for recovering from a formula mistake.
- You will learn an easy way to test your local flour to see if it is strong enough for making bread with.
Requirements
- A willingness to learn and patience are require for this course.
- Kitchen scale and basic baking ingredients and utensils are necessary, unless you just wish to watch.
- Bring your curiosity as we explore bread techniques, issues, science and methods.
- Be willing to have your preconceived notions challenged!
Description
Course updated 5/10/2021
I decided to make this course after being asked many questions behind the "why" of bread baking. I am always exploring the "why" of baking so I thought I would share with you the fun I've had experimenting. This course would be a good one to follow my Sourdough Bread Baking 101 course and it is aimed at beginning and intermediate sourdough bakers.
If you don't have a sourdough starter, don't worry, I will show you step by step (with videos) how to make your own starter. You'll also get a free downloadable e-book on how to make your own sourdough starter that you can print out.
The course covers:
Exploring protein quality in flour. This shows an easy test to see if your flour is suitable for bread baking. After the test we will use our test doughs to bake up a loaf of bread, so depending upon the flour your testing everyone's loaf will turn out different.
Gluten washing - see how to extract gluten from flour. See how it looks and performs, also see how the starch looks.
Recovering from a mistake. I made a huge mistake when I was doing one of the experiments, so instead of ditching the experiments, we explore how to recover from a mistake and we make beautiful Ciabatta bread.
All purpose flour VS bread flour. In this experiment we explore the differences between all purpose flour and bread flour. We'll use three experiments and do a higher hydration each time. You might be surprised at the outcome.
With the last iteration of the comparison loaves, we will use a high quality bread flour and a double hydration to bake up an 88% hydration loaf.
The last thing we will look at is the life cycle of a sourdough starter from feeding to it's death. We'll also make pancakes from the discard!
We'll talk about freezing dough and what happens as well as how to protect gluten in a weak dough and how to slow down fermentation (see the links in the bonus section).
We are going to have a lot of fun! So join me in this exploration of sourdough baking!
Teresa
Who this course is for:
- Beginners, Intermediate students.
- Any person with the curiosity to explore some of the techniques and methods around sourdough bread baking.
Instructor
Teresa loves teaching serious home bakers, how to bake real sourdough bread! She worked at two different bakeries besides baking at home for over 40 years. Eighteen years ago, she built a business (Northwest Sourdough) along with a membership site (The Baking Network) around teaching others how to bake real sourdough at home. She published a four volume book called, "Discovering Sourdough," "Extreme Fermentation" and also, "Make Your Own Sourdough Starter." You can find the live series "Make Your Own Sourdough Starter with Me" on You Tube plus a free downloadable e-book.
Teresa's Facebook group, "Perfect Sourdough" is the largest sourdough bread baking group in the world. She also has other groups, "The Baking Network" and "Bread Bakers and Artisan Baked Goods" for all types of baking. Followers can also join her membership site at "The Baking Network" online.
Her Bread Recipes and Formulas from her books and blog and baking courses have been featured on TV and spread all around the world through online forums, her active Facebook group, Perfect Sourdough, Youtube channel and her site, Northwest Sourdough.
Northwest Sourdough is featured in the resource section of Peter Reinhart's book," Artisan Breads Every Day." Teresa was also one of the photographers for "The Grain Gathering" in it's early years when it was called, "Kneading Conference West." She has been featured in numerous articles, magazines and interviews including Forbes and First for Women. She was selected as one of the top ten Udemy instructors in 2015 and now has thirteen sourdough baking courses on Udemy.
Most of all, Teresa loves to see YOU pull a crispy, crusty, holey sourdough loaf from your own oven. Yes, you can learn to bake the best bread in the world!