No rise blues: An ode to sourdough bakers

Many bakers send me private photos of their loaves attached with rude, judge-y remarks. 

“Pancakes.” 

“F$%#-ing catastrophe.”

“Dismal deflation.”

“Friggin’ flat tire.” 

These are just a few of the adjectives frustrated bakers announce when a loaf doesn’t bounce up to the height they had seen in their dreams or worse still, Instagram.   

I try to console with “That happens to me all the time…” but that never really helps soften a defeated sourdough baker’s fall from grace. 

Let’s face it. Not everyone has the patience or stamina for sourdough baking, especially if you have done some or all of the following:

1. Mixed the levain late one night.
2. Spent the following day sloshing together a long list of ingredients in a bowl, each scoop of flour, splash of water and sprinkle of salt meticulously measured by the gram or ounce.
3. Tugged and stretched and folded every 30 minutes for an entire afternoon or morning before shaping an unbelievably sticky blob into a boule or baton.
4. Transferred your shaped loaves into a flour-lined banneton (upside-down, no less) searched for a shower cap or plastic wrap amid a drawer packed tornado-style with measuring cups, spoons and bench scrapers, your fingers sticky with a floury adhesive plastered on everything you touched including the handle of the fridge where the loaves will retire — yet rise —  overnight until early the next morning, grumpy and tired, you remove said sourdough loaves ever so gingerly, turn their upside-down forms upright on a parchment paper-covered sheet, score each with a sharp razor blade tremulously pinched between bent, arthritic fingers, don elbow-high, warrior-thick oven mitts, reach into a 500 F degree oven without pulling another muscle, place a hot Lodge combo cooker on the range top, remove its cover,  slide a scored loaf into it, replace the lid, emit a bovine-like moan while lifting the five-ton, molten hot-lidded combo cooker, bend back down again into the hellish heat to settle one pan and remove the next until both loaves are now blessedly in their baking place, covered until the timer dings in 20 minutes to uncover what could be the most blissful or depressing sight you’ve seen in the past 48 hours of your baking life. 

Who cares if you’ve created a splattered 2-inch pool of dough, and not the eight-inch-high bursting boule of your dreams? 

You do, if you have read this far.  Several decades of baking have taught me several lessons or simple rules. 

Rule one for success. To be a sourdough baker you must be obsessed if not on the verge of masochistic.     

Rule two. When the lid comes off and the dough has spread like a pool of blood, tell your ego to shut-up and wonder why. (If George hadn’t been curious, he wouldn’t have lived through all those books).  Was my starter fresh, strong and resilient enough?  Did I shape the boule to have sufficient tension? Am I scoring art or slashing their hearts? Is my flour organic, local and freshly milled? Am I using chlorinated water or sweet spring H2O?

Rule three. Know your dough like the back of your hand, the nose on your face, your third eye, whatever.  When you fail, try the very same bread recipe again, yes, again, without complaining or holding your breath. Just observe.  Do that three-day process all over again making it a meditation on sticky versus wet, pliable versus loose. Wonder how far you can gently stretch the dough without tearing. Do you want to maintain those bubbles or press them out? What is the ambient temperature of your kitchen? Have you tried putting a thermometer in your flour, dough or water? 

Last rule: Post every winner on Instagram and quietly embrace your losers. Listen to your palate because sourdough ugly ducklings offer up rich, artisanal flavours you’ll never taste in store-bought.