Moving House and Sourdough: Rye, Pita and Walnut Raisin

Apart from my university years and the one after them, I have spent most of my life in the same town. Not out of any particular attachment — I had always thought it hardly mattered where you lived — and yet there I stayed. Sea and mountains, and a small river running through. Umeda and Sannomiya both a short train ride away. Artists came to visit from all over the country; it was an easy place to reach from almost anywhere. And quiet enough.

In February this year I left it and came to Fukuoka. The mountain starts right behind the house, and the streets are full of slopes. For a while everything was unsettled, and I had no appetite for baking. Sourdough is simple and easy, but it takes time. Without a little room in your head, you do not get round to it.

From about last month I have finally had the space to bake again, roughly once a week. The kitchen in the new place is small, though, and now I struggle to work up the motivation to photograph anything. I have been trying things — pita bread with sourdough, loaves baked without scoring. For now, trying things and writing the recipes down here feels like the way to build a new daily rhythm quickly.

 — Rye bread

The difficulty with rye is that it tastes better for having rye in it, but the more you add, the more care it takes to keep the rise. As the proportion goes up the loaf rises less and the texture gets heavier. What I want is the flavour and some lightness with it.

Ingredients:

• Starter (bread flour)40g
• Starter (rye)20g
• Bread flour (Kitanokaori)220g
• Rye flour 30g
• Water (around 20°C)167cc
• Salt4g

1. Put 167cc of water in a bowl and dissolve 4g of salt in it. Add the bread flour starter and the rye starter and stir well. It is ready when the whole thing is uniformly cloudy with no lumps.

2. Combine the measured bread flour and rye flour, then add them to bowl 1.

3. Start roughly with a scraper; once it is more or less combined, use your hands to bring it together into a single mass.

4. Leave at room temperature for about an hour, until everything has hydrated.

5. Do a stretch and fold, then cover the bowl and put it in the fridge.

6. Do three stretch and folds in total, at 90-minute intervals. The room is warm at this time of year and the dough goes slack easily, so ferment in the fridge.

7. Move the dough from the bowl to the work surface and rest it for about 30 minutes. Shape it, transfer it to the basket, and return it to the fridge.

8. Cold ferment in the fridge. Bake the next morning.

— Bread without scoring

A Portuguese bakery I found on Instagram recently, Mario Rolando , has caught my attention. Their loaves have a distinctive form, like volcanic magma. From the videos, the hydration looks very high, and rather than cutting an elaborate score they seem to let the fermenting power of the sourdough shape the loaf from the inside. Taken with the idea, I have been baking loaves without scoring them.

When you put the shaped dough into the basket, you would normally have the folded side facing up; here you put the folded side against the bottom of the basket instead. That way the folded side ends up on top when you bake, and as the dough rises the surface tears open at random.

— Pita bread

Now and again I want to make something other than a loaf with sourdough. Pancakes, focaccia. This time, pita. It has not gone especially well, and the research continues.

Ingredients:

• Starter (rye)60g
• Bread flour (Kitanokaori)240g
• Water (around 20°C)90cc
• Olive oil10cc
• Salt7g
• Sugar10g

It seems to need less fermentation time than an ordinary sourdough loaf. The trick appears to be rolling it out thinly and evenly. A domestic oven limits how many you can bake at once, so it may be worth starting with about half the quantities above. Next time I am thinking of adding yoghurt to the dough.