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Sour Dough Bread
For 1 cup "Starter": 1/2 TEASPOON SODA 1/2 TEASPOON SALT FLOUR I TABLESPOON SHORTENING Mix soda and salt with a little flour, add to "starter" and continue to add flour until a dough is formed that can be kneaded. Press dough out flat, spread with softened shortening, and knead until thoroughly mixed and dough seems elastic. Form into loaves, put into greased pans, and let rise. Start baking in hot oven. Bread should continue to rise for 15 minutes and then it should begin to color, and continue to brown for 20 minutes. If oven is too hot, reduce heat a little, and lay buttered paper over bread. Temperature for a civilized oven is 375°-425°. Brush loaves with melted fat or butter when done.
Of course the original sour dough method is different from above. You make a well in your bag or barrel of flour, pour the starter in, and work enough flour from around the sides to form the dough, adding salt as you go along. Lift dough out of flour-the next batch can follow in the well that's left and proceed to do your kneading and make your loaves on the barrel top.
A camp-style sourdough that leans on baking soda as much as on the starter, so the soda has to go in last and the loaves have to reach the oven promptly. Everything else is flexible, including the flour, which is measured by feel.
- What "1 cup starter" meansA cup of active, well-fermented starter, fed and bubbling. A stiff or cold starter taken straight from the refrigerator will work slowly and may struggle to raise the loaf.
- Flour quantityThe recipe deliberately gives none. Expect 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour per cup of starter, added until the dough is firm enough to knead and only slightly tacky.
- The soda is the hingeThe half teaspoon of soda neutralises the starter's acid and gives extra lift, but it begins working the moment it hits the wet dough. Mix it with a little flour first as directed, then keep the shaping and rise short rather than leaving the loaves for hours.
- Oven temperature"hot oven" is glossed at the end as 375-425F. Working near the top of that range and easing down once the loaves begin to colour follows the recipe's own advice to reduce the heat if the oven is too hot, but no stepped schedule is given.
- Rise timeWith soda in the dough, one shaped rise of 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours in a warm spot is usually enough; go by the loaf nearly doubling rather than the clock.
- Buttered paperThe period trick for a top that is colouring too fast. Parchment or loosely tented foil over the loaves does the same thing without the butter.
- Testing for doneTotal baking runs about 35 minutes. A finished loaf sounds hollow tapped on the bottom and reads 200-210F at the centre.
- YieldOne cup of starter makes a single small loaf, roughly a 8x4-inch pan, or two camp-shaped rounds. Scale the starter, soda and salt together for more.
- The flour-barrel methodThe alternative described at the end works, but it distributes the salt less evenly and uses no soda at all, so the bread is likely to be denser and more sour. Mixing the salt into the flour you draw in is surer than adding it "as you go along."
Sourdough was a working leaven of the North American frontier and of the Klondike, where "sourdough" became a nickname for an old-timer prospector -- traditionally explained by the starter he kept alive against the cold, though that explanation is as much folklore as documented fact. The flour-barrel method given at the close of this recipe is the older practice: no bowl, no measuring, a well scooped in the flour itself and the next batch begun in the hollow the last one left. The addition of baking soda is a later refinement, common in American cookery once saleratus and then modern soda became cheap; it tames the sourness and insures against a sluggish starter.