Classic Sourdoughs (30 page)

GROWING UP IN
a conservation-minded family imbued Ed Wood with a love for wildlife, which led to a degree in fish and game management from Oregon State University. He pursued a PhD in nutrition and biology at Cornell, where he studied under Dr. Clive McCay, one of this country’s foremost pioneers in nutrition research, and Dr. Peter Olafson, an equal authority in animal pathology. From Cornell, Ed joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where he did basic research on the pathology of trout and salmon. The challenging field of pathology drew him to the University of Washington and a Doctor of Medicine degree, followed by a residency in human pathology. Along the way, he served as a consultant for studies on diseases of the Olympia oyster and cancer in trout. During all of this time, a particular class of equally unique organisms captured his imagination—the organisms of sourdough that had produced man’s bread for thousands of years.

In 1983, Ed became the chairman of pathology in a new hospital for the Saudi Arabian National Guard. He and his wife, Jean, spent a couple of years near Riyadh. Knowing that the Middle East was the historic birthplace of leavened bread, they began a quest for sourdough cultures that had been passed down through generations of bakers from the beginning of civilization. Their adventures yielded a collection of sourdoughs from around the world, some dating back to antiquity.

Jean Wood graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in pharmacy, and her background in chemistry and biology led her to an interest in the microbiology of sourdoughs. When Jean and Ed returned to the United States, they brought their cultures and international sourdough recipes with them. With this collection, they formed Sourdoughs International. Four years and many baking experiments later, they produced the first of several books on the science and art of sourdough. In addition to doing much of the writing for the company’s books and instruction
pamphlets, Jean did all the graphics for booklet covers and packaging, and much of the test baking in their facility on their forested ranch in the mountains of Idaho. Jean passed away in October, 2010.

IT TOOK US
almost twenty-five years to collect the sourdough cultures we have chosen. Each is a product of the different organisms dominant in the various areas we visited. Many represent a personal adventure with fond memories. We pass them along to you hoping you will share our passion not only to experience the taste of the world’s best bread, but also to sample a tiny part of the ancient history that produced them.

From time to time, you will hear it proclaimed that when a culture is moved from one area to another, it becomes contaminated by the organisms of the new area. Don’t believe a word of it. These sixteen cultures came to Idaho from all over the world. After twenty-five years of proper care, they haven’t changed an iota.

As home bakers, you are the most important ingredient in success with your cultures, and if you use and care for your cultures well, you will have the same successes with them as we have enjoyed.

In 1997, we had the good fortune to acquire the authentic San Francisco sourdough culture. Extensive research published in 1970 identified for the first time both the wild yeast that makes this sourdough bread rise and the strain of bacteria that produces its flavor. The researchers developed methods to permit commercial bakers to duplicate the process everywhere. We are now sending this same culture to home
bakers. The wild yeast was originally classified as a strain of
Saccharomyces exiguus
, called
Torulopsis holmii
. It has since been reclassified as
Candida milleri
and again reclassified as
Candida humilis
. The bacteria is
Lactobacillus sanfrancisco
. The two organisms thrive in a symbiotic relationship that has protected the culture from contamination from other yeasts and bacteria for more than a century of baking. Now you can produce authentic San Francisco sourdough in your kitchen, both by hand and in home baking machines.

A booklet of special instructions for this culture is included with it to be used in conjunction with the sourdough baking information in this book.

After searching for Italian cultures unsuccessfully for years, we were unexpectedly contacted by Marco Parante, a globally recognized expert and consultant on authentic pizza napoletana. He offered us two cultures from the Naples area. One of these cultures has been carefully guarded and is difficult to obtain, and many of our orders originate in Italy. From Marco, we have the only authentic instructions for the use of these cultures from Ischia and Camaldoli and we are the only authorized source in the United States for these cultures. They are among the best we have ever used, consistently producing fabulous breads and pizzas that are flavorful and can be quite sour. The two cultures are packaged together with Italian recipes and culture-care instructions, allowing you to bake your own traditional and authentic pizzas, ciabattas, and Italian country breads. The recipes have also been adjusted for use in bread machines without sacrificing flavor.

We have two cultures from New Zealand, which we sell together. With this combination, even the novice can be an “artisan” baker.

In 2003, we acquired from Kristeva Dowling a culture that is one of the easiest and best choices for the novice sourdough baker. It has been used around the world with great success ever since. This description in an email from Krista in New Zealand insured that we would give it a try: “I captured my own sourdough almost two years ago. It is a lovely sourdough that works for everything from whole wheat,
potato, sweet breads, etc. I first caught the yeast in Rotorua and it has gotten much better and mellowed in flavour.”

A year later, I heard from Charles Schatz in Wellington, who describes himself as a Yank from Brooklyn. He grew up on Eastern European rye breads, and after moving to New Zealand, he captured a rye sour culture and started producing his own rye breads. This culture introduces something special, the rye sour. As far as we know, this true rye sourdough is the only one available to the home baker. We package it in coarse pumpernickel rye, and you can use it to easily produce those fabulous rye sourdough breads.

Australian beer and wine have become favorites around the world. Now you can add to that list another unique fermented Australian product—sourdough. Just as Australian wine has its own notable qualities, this culture produces breads with a distinctive flavor and texture. It has the added benefit of being ideal for spelt and Kamut flours. We acquired it when Dianne Shoobridge from Tasmania emailed information about a culture she had collected. “Earlier this year, I was passing a local deli in Hobart and the unmistakable smell of sourdough hit me. I decided I could try sourdough. So on a misty, late summer morning, I put a spelt flour and water mix in the middle of a paddock to capture my own culture. Within three days, I had something going and I haven’t looked back.”

This culture was collected by Gray Handcock in Kenilworth, a suburb of Capetown. In his email correspondence with Sourdoughs International, Handcock describes the culture and its origin this way: “I have made cultures before and indeed I made my own bread for close to 5 years. For some reason, I threw the culture out and started eating ‘cardboard.’ However, when I started wanting flavour in my bread again, I collected this new culture. It is very flexible with regard to rising times and can create a very strongly flavoured loaf. The taste has the potential to become very powerful when fermentation is left for 8 to 10 hours. I always use pure whole wheat, no unbleached white flour. This culture is easy going and has been trained on whole
wheat, and it functions with either somewhat wet or somewhat dry doughs. It rises at temperatures down to 18° Centigrade (64°F).”

This is the only sourdough culture we are aware of that leavens whole wheat better than it does white flour, and it is therefore ideal for those who grind their own flour. The flavor is truly unique, and when combined with 100 percent whole wheat flour, it yields breads with unsurpassed texture, sourness, and flavor. We have also grown it using all white flour. The nutty flavor persists and white sourdough breads made with this culture are quite different from those prepared with our other sourdough cultures.

Sourdoughs International prepares this culture in the same manner as other cultures, except that it is grown in 100 percent whole wheat flour. Its ability to leaven whole wheat doughs offers the home baker almost unlimited opportunities to experiment with different combinations of whole wheat, spelt, Kamut, and white flours. Instructions are included with this culture.

Russian-born Tanya Bevan contacted us because her experience with American commercial breads was a culture shock, and she was desperately searching for an Old World culture. We sent her one from Finland, and soon we became better acquainted with her. At that time, she lived in Seattle and worked as a tour guide to Russia. Since she has a background in science and makes frequent trips to Russia, she seemed an ideal person to bring us a Russian culture. We asked and she brought us two!

The one we sell is from the village of Palekh two hundred miles northeast of Moscow. It is a fast-leavening culture, handles heavy Russian whole wheat doughs, and works very well in automatic home bread machines.

Our French culture is from a small bakery on the outskirts of Paris that has been in business for more than 150 years. The starter rises very well and the dough has one of the mildest sourdough flavors.

Ed has quite a story to tell about acquiring this culture. It almost landed him in a Saudi jail. The culture is from the old section of Innsbruck and the bakery carries a sign over the entrance proclaiming 1795 as the year the business opened.

Ed says, “We were on our way from Saudi Arabia to West Germany, where I was to learn how to use the electron microscope. By pure serendipity, we had stopped by a small bakery and were staring through a window at a sign saying “Sauer Brot”! Even with no German, we knew what that meant and went inside on the hunt. Hand signals worked well enough to get us to a partially underground room with three bakers at work, and we left with a sample of dough.

“A week later, I had flattened, dried, and powdered the dough, and just before we left for Saudi Arabia, I wrapped the white powder in aluminum foil and pushed the package into a pocket of my sport jacket. I forgot all about it until we walked through a metal detector at the Jeddah airport and I was forcibly reminded. An armed guard was in my face instantly and I was searching for an explanation, any explanation. I finally introduced my dried culture as the remnants of my lunch, which didn’t seem to be going over too well, when some other soul tripped the same detector and the guard waved me on.”

The culture is especially adapted to rye flours, rises somewhat slowly, and produces one of the more sour doughs.

Our acquisition of the Yukon culture has to be the strangest story of them all. We got it when we were in Saudi Arabia. We had just arrived in a beautiful new hospital built for the Saudi Arabian National Guard and knew absolutely no one. I was walking down a corridor when someone behind me shouted, “Hey, Ed!” That shout came from a former medical school classmate, Art Harris, who was the hospital’s radiologist and whom I hadn’t seen in well over ten years. As we caught up, it emerged that his physician father practiced in the Yukon and had been given a culture from a local prospector. He had given some of it to his son.

I had another culture with me and the two of us decided on a baking experiment to determine if the two cultures were actually different. We did just that and the
results could not have been more definitive. The flavor of the Yukon inspired us to search Europe and the Middle East for other sourdoughs, to see how they differed in their turn. The Yukon culture has a moderately sour flavor, and I have a host of friends who swear it is the only culture for real Yukon sourdough flapjacks.

When our son, Keith, a biochemist and avid sourdough baker, made a business trip to Finland he was programmed to bring back an authentic Finnish culture. He had to go to small villages to find one, but he did return with both a culture and a book on Finnish breads. This culture has a wonderful and distinctive flavor and it rises well.

This culture is from one of the oldest ethnic bakeries in Egypt. We found it in Hurghada on the shore of the Red Sea, when this city was still just a village. The bread was actually placed out on the street to rise. This culture has a mild flavor and works well in home bread machines—certainly a new environment for it.