Customer Reviews

Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker's Handbook

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book really is for the home baker who doesn't have the special ovens and tools of the artisans like Daniel Leader's Bread Alone or Nancy Singleton"s La Brea Bakery. Ed Wood's book gives instructions that can be used with any sourdough starter although I have produced far better sourdoughs with his starters than any I captured myself. There isn't a baker's yeast recipe in the entire book. If you're a novice baker or an old hand, you can learn a lot about sourdoughs from this book.

This is the only book I have found that really tells how to make sourdough bread the right way without having to use yeast. The book gives explicit instructions from the moment the starter comes from the refrigerator until the finished loaf leaves the pan. The step by step methods tell how to produce an active starter every time so the bread always rises well.
Each recipe gives different options for length of proofing cycles using different proofing temperatures. I was never able to control the temperature during proofing until I read the description for making an inexpensive proofing box described in the book. It made all the difference between success and failure.

I began following this author quite a while ago including reading ealier books because there wasn't that much information about baking sourdough bread. He has simplified the directions a little but I was never successful with his directions until I took a course at King Arthur and discovered that baking sourdoughs isn't all that complicated. Now I make naturally leavened bread almost every week. I finally trashed the silly "proof box" that Mr. Wood recommends. I occasionally dip into this book to try the recipes and I'm pretty sure some of them have significant errors (the SF sourdough turns out more like a ciabatta because either the flour or water measurments are wrong). If you want a really good book on bread baking check out "Bread A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes" by Jeffrey Hamelman. It has lots of good sourdough recipes based on solid baking formulas.

The thing I liked best about Dr. Wood's new book was the section on doing sourdoughs in bread machines. For the last 10 years I've been totally frustrated trying to get a decent sourdough out of a machine. Now, I'm turning out a perfect sourdough with the sourness I really like and the loaf comes out with that open texture with all the big holes of a real San Francisco sourdough.

If you are looking for scientific and detailed instructions on sourdough, as I was expecting it from a scientist author and TenSpeed Press book description, Wood's book is not the best money the amateur baker can spend. Very few details (as few as 23 lines on p.8-9) are given on how to make your own sourdough culture and there is no clear instructions on how to use homemade chef--instead of chef made from exotic dry cultures marketed by the author--in the 102 recipies which form the main section of the book (p. 54-183). The book is no doubt excellent but if, as I do, you like to make things by yourself from A to Z, Daniel Leader's "Bread Alone"--in which seven pages cover minutely each sourdough making steps--is much more rewarding despites its very important editing mistakes (I have been told Mr. Leader is working on a second improved handbook). Following Leader's instructions, I successfuly made my first incredibly tasteful sourdough loaves few years ago. But the most complete (almost encyclopedic) information and instructions I found not only on sourdough making but also on poolish, sponge, etc, are in Raymond Calvel's "Le gout du pain" (recently translated into English as "The Taste of Bread" [...]) though the latter book is not for home baking. Look also for "Boulangerie Simon Rodolphe" on the net where a wealth of practical informations on sourdough making can be found.

I have used the recipes in this book and they work pretty well with the Sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour - I then purchased some starters from Ed Wood and followed the instructions in the book. When they did not revive (they came dried) his basic reply was "tough" even though they claim you will get a refund. Since the book is an infomercial for his starters I would think they would be a little more friendly!!

My whole incentive for purchasing this book was that I was under the perception that it would go into great detail on how to create, or activate, and maintain sourdough cultures. The author spends a whole one and a half pages on this topic only!!!!Do not purchase for the recipes--- nothing special at all.
The process is explained in much better detail in other books on Artisan Baking (like Peter Reinhardt's' "Crust and Crumb".

In addition, I purchased dried cultures from his company ($ 35.00), and when I had vital questions during activation, it took him six days to respond. When I then sent a series of (distressed) inqueries, he tells me "buy my book, the answers are there!!! ".I had already bought the book --- and it is over-rated. This "king of cultures" is vague on detail, and impatient with support.

I've only had this book a few days, and have only tried a few recipes, but already love it. Unlike other cookbooks that fill up the vast majority of pages with personal anecdotes and rambling stories about something that happened 400 years ago in a kitchen, this author keeps the information concise, helpful, and clear. He gives you what you NEED to know about keeping your starter happy, kneading and baking bread, and the rundown on fancy gizmos you may have been told that you need. Each recipe is laid out on its own page, with clear EASY TO FOLLOW instructions. Unlike other cookbooks, this author does not skip steps or forget to tell the reader when to add a certain ingredient. He doesn't use funky fonts that make it hard to read and he actually gives a brief description of what each recipe tastes like - and he keeps that description to two sentences, tops. He sells all the different varieties of sourdough starter that are described in the book and spends about 5 pages giving a brief rundown of all of them at the end. Over all, this is a FANTASTIC cookbook and I am extremely pleased with the purchase.

The only downside I can possibly think of is that all of these recipes need to set for at least 3 hours, almost all of them for 12, and a fair portion for 23 in total before they can be baked. The only exception is for biscuits, which can be made faster. If you're looking for a cookbook that will show you how to whip up something sourdough in just a few minutes, you won't be happy with this one.

In fact, I am so pleased with this cookbook that I would buy another by this author even if the subject matter was the preparation of foods I never eat.

Since learning to bake bread 5 or 6 years ago I've always held sourdough to be the ultimate achievement in bread baking. In that time I perfected my pizza dough recipe (using instant yeast), and could use the same dough to make a pretty good loaf of white bread. My preferred method is to mix the dough and leave it for a long, long proof in a cold fridge. Fermenting dough before baking, however, is really just an attempt to partake of a bit of the sourdough process without adopting it completely.

Part of the problem with the whole topic of sourdough is the name. The bread baked from a "sourdough" starter doesn't have to be sour. Peter Reinhart prefers to call it "wild yeast" to be more exact. For thousands of years bakers had to rely on the single-celled fungi that are in the air, in the flour, even on our skin, to leaven dough. But this process was (and remains) as much an art as a science. Some bakers learned how to cut corners by borrowing the foam from beer brewers for its yeast. In the 1860s the Fleischmanns figured out how to cultivate and dry "brewers yeast" and revolutionized the baking industry.

But, convenient as commercial yeast makes baking, it's not the same animal (ok, plant) as wild yeast, and there are purists out there who claim this shift was the beginning of the decline of bread. There are studies to suggest that they have a point: one indicates people with Celiac disease can safely eat wild-yeast bread, and another suggests that because of the increase of lactic acid and the reduction of simple carbohydrates produced by the sourdough process,wild-yeast bread could be of benefit to diabetics. Accomplished bakers like Ed Wood, a scientist living in Idaho, recommend using wild yeast exclusively and avoiding "contaminating" your bread with commercial yeast. Dr. Wood worked with National Geographic on a project concerning a bakery on the building site of the pyramids in Egypt. He successfully captured the still-abundant yeasts from the site, and they are among the international cultures you can buy from his company, Sourdoughs International. His book, Classic Sourdoughs, is a classic of its own for its straightforward and sensible approach to this seemingly complicated field.

A few weeks ago I was bitten by the sourdough bug again, and borrowed every book available through my library system on the topic. There's plenty of contradictory advice from writers on just about every step in the process, from starting the culture and keeping it active, to making the dough. Everybody has their own opinion concerning the proper method of capturing wild yeast for your own culture, with some authors complicating the process with grapes or pineapple juice. I don't doubt these procedures work, but I followed the method that had worked for me before. I simply combined a little flour and water into a ball of dough the size of a golf ball, put it into a jar, covered it with plastic wrap and left it on my counter for a few days. After "feeding" it with a little more flour and water and leaving it for a few more days I could tell from the air bubbles that my yeast colony was active. Come to find that was pretty much the same simple method Dr. Wood teaches in Classic Sourdoughs.

From there I had to find out how much starter I needed to have in order to make a loaf of bread. Some bakers use only a tablespoon or two and build it up from there, others use as much as two cups. Again, I don't doubt this or that recipe, but I just needed an easy template to work from. Classic Sourdoughs seemed to have the easiest: every recipe starts off with wild-yeast culture in liquid or sponge form (thinner or thicker consistency, respectively), to which you add a little flour and water and let it proof for 12 hours. You "build" it up again with more flour and water, and let it proof for 8 more hours. Then you add the rest of the ingredients (salt, other flours, sometimes oil or eggs), form your loaves and let them rise for another 1 - 4 hours until fully proofed. Bake, cool and eat. There is nothing difficult about any step in the process, but it takes a bit of planning ahead.

With small alterations, this is the formula for everything from San Francisco sourdough and rye bread to sourdough pancakes and cinnamon rolls. All the breads I've made from this book have come out fine. I've made the San Francisco recipe (great, but not sour), pizza dough (the crust came out nice and soft, but my wife thought it was bland compared to my usual recipe), and Middle Eastern pitas (I used whole wheat flour - delicious with a little tang). From his batter recipe I've made the cornbread (very good and not too "corny") and banana bread (awesome and moist). The only disappointment so far were the sourdough pancakes, which were rubbery, but that could be from creating gluten by mixing the starter too vigorously. Wood's method doesn't require thrice-daily feedings like some authors, making me think some people don't trust their starters to get the job done. I would only add to his method what I learned from Peter Reinhart: the finished dough can be put in the refrigerator to build more flavor or simply to wait until you're ready to bake it! I did this with the wild-yeast pizza dough and it worked fine. Now I'm looking forward to trying his rye recipes, too.

I own all of Dr. Wood's books. In my opinion this is the best reference, while World Sourdoughs from Antiquity provides interesting historical information on sourdough baking.

I find the recipes quite adequate if one is familiar with making bread at home. If one is new to bread making then I strongly suggest The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book and a loaf for learning contained therein first. Get familiar with baking a yeasted bread before moving to sourdough.

Regardless, since one person's cup of flour weighs 4 ounces and another's 5 ounces I personally prefer recipes by weight. Thus, the volume measurement in Dr. Wood's book versus weight is less desirable for me personally.

I have two cultures from Sourdoughs International -- the original San Francisco and the Russian. I recently activated the Russian as well as a control of flour and water. Both the Russian and the control activated within 24 hours and both had the aroma of a restaurant dumpster in the hot, summer sun.

Following Dr. Wood's directions in this book I washed both the Russian culture and the control. The Russian revived nicely and over the course several successive washings developed into a fragrant, active starter. However, the control did not.