The Perfect Loaf: The Craft and Science of Sourdough Breads, Sweets, and More: A Baking Book

Introduction


It's early morning in my home kitchen and, as usual, I'm at the counter with my red grain mill loaded with wheat berries. I ready the hand-operated gristmill to produce fresh, fragrant flour for today's dough as sunlight streams in through the windows. I smell the aromas of fresh flour and sourdough starter and feel a familiar mix of anticipation and early morning energy. This ritual kicks off a day structured around fermentation, mixes, folds, and shapes. An opportunity to connect my hands with a tangible output, a pathway for creativity and expression. In today's world of notifications and keyboards and screens, the simple act of dunking my hands into a bowl containing only sourdough, salt, flour, and water-squishing and squeezing to combine the elementary ingredients-is utterly satisfying. A primordial contentment.

Made from three simple ingredients, bread doesn't need to be complicated-they certainly didn't have a digital thermometer in ancient Rome. The beauty of baking bread is it's a craft that can be as deep and complicated as you want it to be. It can be as simple as mixing that handful of ingredients in a bowl, letting it ferment, and then baking it when ready. But it can be complex, too: Just talk to any longtime baker about their starter maintenance or levain builds and you'll likely uncover a topic of great passion and intricacy.

As your baking experience increases, your proficiency and knowledge of every facet of the process grow deeper. Over time, even the seemingly smallest details, like what temperature your starter is kept at in the kitchen, or the angle at which you hold your bench knife to preshape dough, can become exciting areas of focus, opportunities for growth, or a chance to test something new. The entire act of baking becomes a playground, a place to satisfy a curiosity or express your creativity, all leading to the enjoyment you feel as you nourish yourself and others. And no matter your experience or your level of rigor, the resulting bread will almost always be delightful.

But what exactly is "the perfect loaf"? If you talk to ten different bakers, each will furnish a different story. Each will pause in thought, then proceed to talk about the crust, the crumb, the aroma, the flavor- a laundry list of distinctive qualities that attempt to pin down the loaf they are searching for, the loaf that might finally come out of the oven the next bake. For me, it's the loaf that is light in hand with an open interior, a crunchy crust baked dark and menacing that shows all the colors between dark mahogany and light brown. It's bread with just enough sourness from the natural fermentation to make your mouth water, with enough wholesomeness from whole grains to let you know this food is nourishing and honest. This list with these adjectives is constantly unfolding as my skill set evolves and expands, as experiments are performed and lessons learned-an endless pursuit of perfection that begins anew with every mix of flour and water.

In truth, I don't think there is such a thing as a perfect loaf, but rather, it's in the work toward that goal where the reward for baking truly lies: The small steps along the winding path, the valuable additions and revelations uncovered-that's where we discover the joy in the smallest of details. The baker's journey is replete with these moments of satisfaction: each time we get our hands dirty mixing flour and water, when we're presented with a light and airy dough that's just asking to be shaped, and that moment we pull loaves from the oven that have us gasp in contentment. Sure, there will be missteps along the way, loaves that didn't rise how we wanted (or even at all), ones that tasted uninspiring, others with a dull and inert crust. But in every mix, every shape, every bake, there's a lesson to be learned. And with each lesson, we're a step further along our path. The joy is in the process, the discovery, endless exploration, and constant improvement. The result of our toil with fermentation, flour, hydration levels, and doughs of all kinds is the contentment seen on the faces of those with whom we share our bread.

Ultimately, baking sourdough bread is your own personal journey toward the bread you want to bake and enjoy, and this book is the result of my attempt to help you get there.


About Me, The Obsessed Sourdough Baker

I grew up amid sacks of flour, cans of tomatoes, artichokes, and black olives, flour on the bench and in the air, the sounds of a giant mixing arm diving, spinning, and churning pizza dough. As a kid in my dad's Italian restaurant, everything was something to explore, to taste, to take apart, a chance to learn som...