It was during the COVID19 pandemic when I started my first sourdough journey.
A lot of people started making bread around that time because they had to stay home.
I didn’t stay home.
I was categorized as an essential worker, so my work routine did not change; I continued to go to my office every day.
But I needed something to get my mind off of the pandemic.
There was a lack of flour at stores, and sometimes I had to drive to suburbs to get enough flour so that I could feed my starter.
My very first starter, Bobby, needed a lot of flour (I followed instructions on a popular blog that called for 1 cup of flour to start and 1 cup of flour daily to feed).
It took Bobby over 14 days to reach the active level where I could use to bake bread, so I used A LOT of flour.
I was stressed because it was taking longer than expected, and I didn’t like wasting flour by discarding it (I did try some discard recipes, but having the feeling that I had to use it stressed me out, too).
Now I believe one of the reasons why it took that long was that my starter was too thin, which I did not realize until later.
This time I was fairly confident regarding the process, but I took guidance from a different source, Ms. Elaine ‘s site.
Her instructions were appealing to me because they called for only 30g, instead of one cup of flour, to start, to feed, and to maintain the starter.
My starter looked thin like the last time when I used an equal weight of flour and water (30g flour and 30g of water), but this time I was able to quickly remedy that by adjusting the amount of water as suggested by Ms. Elaine, which I believe helped a lot.
My starter, Charlie, became ready in about 10 days.
It could have become ready sooner if I hadn’t used reverse osmosis (RO) water in the beginning.
Four years ago when I started my first sourdough journey, I was living in Minnesota, where I had a large kitchen, a large oven, and a few Dutch pots.
In Minnesota I owned one Le Creuset and one Staub, and I used them both to bake sourdough bread.
You can see what I made…
If you are interested in my whole sourdough journey in Minnesota (part 1), check out these pages.
Things have changed since then.
Now I live in Bangkok.
With my smaller kitchen, my smaller oven, and no Dutch pot (I didn’t want to buy one since I only wanted to own minimum to pursue a simple life), I knew I had to do things a bit differently this time.
So I started reading again.
Four years ago I obsessively read anything about sourdough.
At that time I thought I learned everything I needed to know.
But apparently that was not the case, and I learned so much more information I had not known before, like cold proofing (I have no idea how I missed it before!!).
Since my oven was smaller, I decided to make small-sized bread (250g flour), and because I didn’t have a Dutch pot or a pizza stone I experimented by crafting a dome with aluminum foil, hoping to create steam.
I was really hoping this would work, but at the same time I was skeptical because it did not seal tightly as the foil was light and the bottom was not evenly straight.
I baked it at 225 C for 30 minutes covered (convection) and then uncovered for 15 minutes (convection, top heat only).
This was the result.
It looked decent outside.
But the inside revealed signs of under-proofing, and the bottom was too soft.
This was actually my second bread I made with Charlie.
The first one got its bottom burned and stuck to the paper, so this time I placed the dough/paper on a little ring made of aluminum foil so that there was a little room between the dough and the pan.
I also moved the pan up from the bottom.
So this one did not get burned on the bottom, but it did not get browned enough.
It’s hard to say how well or how poorly my foil dome worked because there were so many other issues like under-proofing (major issue), in addition to smaller issues such as the foil ring that limited the heat to the bottom too much, poor quality (I suspected) parchment paper, and possibly the oven temperature not high enough.
Thus, this experiment did not prove that using a Dutch pot would be essential.
There were several things I needed to change for my third bread to be better, like extending the time for bulk fermentation for sure and probably cold proofing, getting better quality parchment paper, baking at a higher temperature, and no more foil ring.
BUT at that point I made a decision to purchase a pot because I felt that would be a good investment if I continued to bake sourdough bread regularly.
Finding the right pot turned out to require more research.
First of all, it had to be the right size.
It had to fit into my 30L Electrolux toaster oven but large enough to accommodate a loaf of bread.
After measuring the inside of my oven, I headed to a kitchen store with my tape measure and the pan I took from my oven.
After looking at several pots I figured that a 20 cm pot would be the best choice.
The store had Le Creuset and Staub, but I wanted something that would be a little more reasonable as I would use it only to bake bread.
At the store I also found an Italian brand, Ballarini, pot, on sale, for about 150 US dollars, which was about a half the price of Le Creuset or Staub.
I almost bought it, but I had a few more days before I would need a pot to bake my next bread, so I went home and did some more research.
And I’m glad I did because I found VARDAGEN ３L that might work well for me on the IKEA website.
The price was right, about a half of the Ballarini.
So I went to IKEA (luckily there is one near where I live) to look at it.
One concern I had about this pot was how to care/maintain the pot (oiling, heating in the oven, etc.).
There was some confusion about that when I looked into it online.
Some sources indicated that you have to treat it (oil and bake in an oven three times) first, whereas other sources said no need to do anything except washing it.
After some more research based on what people were saying and when they said what they said, I came to a conclusion that IKEA used to sell a cast iron pot that needed extra care, but they switched to “enameled” cast iron, and this new version does not require pre-treatment like the old version.
I did not have this information verified by IKEA, but a little book that came with my pot confirmed that my enameled cast iron pot only needs to be washed before use.
It’s black as you can see.
No color choices, and I was fine with that.
I would have picked black anyway because it’s handsome and looks good in my kitchen.
I was pretty sure that it would fit widthwise, but I was not 100% sure about the height.
So I was relieved that it fit in my oven like it was meant to be!
And I ended up with this beautiful bread!
I did make several changes (e.g., longer bulk fermentation, longer cold proofing, better quality parchment paper, etc.), but I also believe the pot really helped.
I was very happy.
And the blisters!
I preheated the oven with the pot at 230 C, baked the dough covered for 30 minutes, and then for another 15 minutes uncovered.
I wanted to show this picture so that you can see how a 250g-flour bread looked in a 3L IKEA pot.
The following were what I used to make this bread.
-50g Active starter (10g Charlie (starter), 25g AP flour, 25g room temperature water)
-175g lukewarm water
-250g bread flour
-4g salt
Next time I might go with 400g flour (because we finish the 250g-flour bread too quickly!).
The width of the bottom of the pot is smaller (approx. 14cm inside at the bottom vs. 20cm top), but I think it has enough room to handle that size.
Big improvement inside and at the bottom as well.
I kept my shaped dough in the fridge for close to 12 hours, and it developed wonderful complex flavors.
My husband said this was the best-tasting sourdough bread I had made!
We enjoyed the bread for lunch.
It went very well with the ginger carrot soup.
Okay, it was a long post.
Now I’m done.
