Sourdough Sandwich Loaf

It’s been a while since I last blogged, and on top of that it’s been a while since I made this bread. Hopefully this does not become a slideshow wherein I state things like “Here is some dough that is um, well… kind of looks sticky doesn’t it?” or “And here’s a photo of the bread when it came out of the oven. Or was that before it went in?”. I’m sure it won’t be anything like that, but you know, just in case- you have been warned.

Sometimes you just feel like a sandwich. Nothing fancy. Just a nice oblong piece of bread with cheese, ham and lettuce. And some chutney. Maybe some avocado. Some egg too perhaps. Ok, so the filling can be complex, but the surrounding bread you just want to be normal standard bread. But not that sugar filled, soft, springy white stuff from the supermarket whose only redeeming feature is that it is good for holding barbequed sausages with. Where was I? Oh yes, bread.

Really, when you want to make a standard sandwich loaf, perhaps it’s best just to stick with an easy, mix, knead, rise, rise, bake yeasted loaf, and leave the fancy pants sourdough stuff for a fancy pants bread. However when you’re refreshing a sourdough starter every night, you tend to have this desire to actually make some sourdough bread, regardless of how ‘simple’ it is.

So before you start to drift away thinking that perhaps I have actually forgotten how I went about making this (not promising anything though) let’s have a quick refresher of how we start a sourdough loaf…

Left: The night before, mix up white flour, water and a couple of teaspoons of Lionel

Right: The next day everything will be bubbly and active and ready to go!

Flour, Water, Starter & Salt. Give it a good mix for a sticky mass!

You know I do this every time, but I don’t know why; I use a wooden spoon. What is wrong with a wooden spoon? Why not just use a metal spoon if you’re so against wood? Or a Bamboo spoon? Well, it’s not so much the ‘wooden’ part, but the ‘spoon’ part. It’s always the way, I start to stir everything together and in a matter of seconds I have a thick sticky mass that is almost impossible to stir and as such the spoon is discarded and my hands dive in there to continue the mixing. So why not just start with hands and save one more dish to wash? I would say I will remember this next time, but considering I’ve made bread at least twice since, I can’t really say that without being labeled a pants on fire liar.

Leave to rest, knead and another rest before splitting into roughly three and into this rather hefty three loaf tin from Red Beard Bakery. And then it’s time for the waiting game. I think it really is this part of the process that puts so many people off and it’s this stage that really separates the good breads from the bricks. If one gets impatient and decide that ones bread is just not going to rise and one bakes too early one will end up with a dense brick (no matter how many times you say 'one' in a sentence). But if you just have the patience to wait and wait and wait till that dough has risen to at least 1.5 times the size then you’ll have a lovely aerated loaf that will bloom that little bit more in the oven.

I left this to rise at 11.25am and it wasn’t until 5.25pm when I put it in the oven to bake. According to my notes I forgot to use the moisture plus on my oven, but it’s not a big a deal as five of the six sides of the bread are encased in tin anyway so it’s not going to affect the crust a great deal. As you can see below, the bread turned out lovely and a perfect shape for that typical sandwich loaf!

This is a nice bread and despite what I said earlier about sticking to a simpler yeasted bread when baking a sandwich loaf I do think that once in a while it’s nice to have a sourdough sandwich loaf for something a bit different.