How to Imitate Sourdough Bread
You may know that sourdough bread is a weird thing to do during a pandemic, or maybe you, like me, have been baking bread for a long time. Sourdough bread is one of the most difficult breads to make, especially for beginners. Instead of going the long way, you can make a sour loaf by simply adding vinegar. And it turns out that adding a little vinegar can make the bread firmer overall.
Sourdough is a pain in the ass
Caring for a wild yeast starter requires time, patience, and recognizing unusual signs of life in a cup of porridge. Kneading and proofing dough requires a skilled eye to judge when it is ready to bake. Even after these many steps and maybe four or five days of struggling with the dough, you can still mess it up by wasting all that hard work.
I’m not saying, “Why not go out and buy a sourdough loaf?” This is not a simple bread baking trick; It’s just grocery shopping. But it would be nice if there was a way to get that sourdough flavor in the loaf instead of having to let the fermented foam sit for three days before you even start.
How to imitate sourdough bread
Most of the time, when I want something sour, I add acid to it, and unless you’re gifting this loaf to a bread connoisseur, you can do this with bread too. When baking one loaf of bread, add one and a half to two teaspoons of white vinegar to the dough. (For this measurement, one loaf recipe calls for 14 to 16 ounces of flour.) I prefer to add the vinegar only after the dough has begun to mix. Once the consistency becomes shaggy, add vinegar.
I tried this experiment with a simple lean dough recipe (lean dough without adding butter, eggs or sugar) for white bread boules. In the first test, one and a half teaspoons of vinegar were added to the mixture. The sourdough flavor was noticeable, but I wanted to see if I could get more, so I doubled the vinegar to one tablespoon for the second loaf. The results were exciting.
How does vinegar affect gluten?
Baking bread is a practice of observation. It’s such a delicate science that changes in temperature, environmental humidity, or any seemingly minor change in ingredients can cause the dough to behave differently. Adding something as powerful as even dilute acetic acid (white vinegar) I expected a change. I just didn’t know how long it would take me to get there.
Answer: about a tablespoon.
I started noticing changes during the review phase. The first proofing happened about 30 minutes faster than the first loaf. During the second proofing of the shaped dough, I noticed small cracks on the outside. This was especially frustrating because a firm skin is critical to the correct shape of a loaf of bread. This skin allows the loaf to rise up instead of out, so you will end up with a nice tall loaf. This will also make it easier to handle when you get it into the oven. Despite these changes, I persevered.
As expected, the finished second bread had a stronger sour taste. It also had an incredibly elastic, well-risen crumb. My boyfriend and I were amazed by the buoyant texture and slightly sour taste. If the first loaf was good, this one was excellent. However, in terms of appearance, the loaf was a monster. He suffered a lot at the bottom, despite the fact that I scored from above. I’m not an amateur baker and this isn’t my first loaf. In the pictures below you can see how the first test with less vinegar was fine, but the second test was abnormal.
The increased vinegar content began to disrupt my gluten network. In addition to adding flavor, adding vinegar to dough can act as a beneficial dough conditioner, preventing the formation of a strong gluten network. This is why adding a small amount of pie crust can prevent it from hardening. That is why the crumb of the finished loaf had additional looseness and fluffiness. However, there is a limit. Too much vinegar will start to indiscriminately remove the gluten – I had trouble deciding whether the gluten would stay strong on the crust of the loaf. These multiple cracks allowed the bread to rise and tear the dough uncontrollably rather than through the cut I made. To compensate, the weaker gluten structure in the crust was pleasantly pliable as I ate the ugly slices.
Conclusion
You can imitate the taste of sourdough in a regular loaf of lean bread, but there is one caveat. The more vinegar you add, the more structure you will lose. That doesn’t mean you can’t add a tablespoon for a strong sour taste. It just means you may need a little support.
My second test, where the higher vinegar content created cracks all over the surface, might have helped. I used the peel to put the boulet in the oven and added cornmeal to help it heat up faster. It turns out those tiny shards made things worse by poking even more holes in my weak gluten crust. Going back, I would proof the bread on a piece of parchment paper and bake it in the Dutch oven so I don’t need the cornmeal. Better yet, I could bake the bread in a sourdough slice loaf pan. Overall, I liked the springy texture of the crumb and the flavorful, pliable crust so much that I imagine adding a teaspoon of vinegar to future bread, whether sourdough or not.