Authentic San Francisco Sourdough French Bread!

We all love the word "authentic".  We try to buy "authentic".  Even when we don't really know what authentic is.

Our section in the best office I ever worked in would go out to eat as a group a few times a month.  We'd joke that we did it at the beginning of the month, before our wives got our paychecks.,  (We were an uber-nerdy techie group in a large state agency, and we were all guys,)  One month, we went to a middle eastern restaurant with our wives.  One of our guys was from Egypt.  One of the wives was from a southern area of Russia, so both were looking forward to the middle eastern cuisine.  When the dolmas were served, he said they were larger and spicier than his mother made.  She said they were smaller and not nearly as spicy as the ones her mother made.  The discussion continued.  In the end, they agreed that the dolmas were very good, and probably authentic for some area in the middle east.  I just enjoyed the dolmas and that restaurant and regret that restaurant is but a dim memory.

Similarly, since I got into baking with sourdough I've read all sorts of articles about the REAL sourdough, which always seems to be San Francisco Sourdough French Bread.  (A recurring theme here at sourdoughhome is that sourdough has been in use for between 6,500 and 10,000 years, so almost any bread you can think of was, at one point, a sourdough bread.  San Francisco Sourdough French Bread is a style of sourdough bread, but hardly the only sourdough bread worth making.)  Still, it was odd that the recipes bore no real resemblance to one another, other than using a sourdough starter.  In the end, we named our bread "Black Canyon Sourdough Bread" to honor the nearby famous Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and to make it clear that this was a San Francisco STYLE bread.  When you see the word "style" you can bet that it isn't really authentic.

Sadly, there are very few authentic recipes for San Francisco Sourdough Bread on the Internet.  The San Francisco bakeries guarded their recipes with their lives.  And as to getting some of their starter?  Fughedaboutit!  So, people put together their best guesses.  Often without having actually made a pilgrimage to San Francisco.  So it was a best guess at duplicating something they had never tried.  And that includes our "Black Canyon San Francisco (Style) Sourdough Bread"  I should probably rename that recipe.  It is a nice bread, but not really a classic San Francisco Sourdough French Bread.

Wine snobs talk about terroir, and now food purists of all stripes are joining in the conversation.  Chances are good you don't have a real San Francisco Sourdough Starter.  Or the same air.  Or the same water.  Or the same flour. An old baker once told me, "If you want to duplicate someone's bread, don't worry about his starter.  Find out what flour he is using and get some of that."  With all that said, all I can offer is an authentic recipe and a procedure. Please let me know how it works out for you.

You may be asking where I got this "authentic" recipe and the procedure.  In the April 1970 issue of "The Baker's Digest" Leo Kline, T. F. Sugihara, and Linda Bele McCready published two articles about San Francisco Sourdough. "Nature of the San Francisco Sour Dough French Bread Process, I. Mechanics of the Process" and "Nature of the San Francisco Sour Dough French Bread Process, II. Microbiological Aspects".  Most bakers tend to revere Dr. Sugihara and ignore his team mates.  That is a sad oversight,  I was surprised to see the other two names on the papers.  A lot of good sourdough history is documented on WikiPedia and the Discover website.

The team wanted to know why the San Francisco Sourdough French Bread of the day tasted so much better than other breads.  They were able to convince the bakers that they weren't trying to open a competing bakery, they just wanted to understand, and the bakers opened their doors for the team.  The team was able to isolate strains of yeast and bacteria they (incorrectly) thought only lived in the San Francisco bay area.  They also documented how the bakeries made the breads.  And then they put together a recipe based on the common steps that everyone in the area used.

A quick note - this recipe represents what was happening in San Francisco in the 1960's.  Since then, most of the old bakeries have closed and many new bakeries have sprung up.  It isn't clear that you can find a classic San Francisco Sourdough French Bread these days,  I think Boudin is the only one still open after all these years, and it isn't clear they are still doing it the way it was done in the days of yore.  Of the new bakeries, the WikiPedia article says, "Although they represent a return to older ideals of craftsmanship, modern San Francisco bread makers do not generally try to recreate old-style bread. Instead, the bakeries compete to develop signature loaves and to develop unique shapes, flavors, and styles."

At the end of the day, this recipe is the real deal.  Whether we like the results will be another question - let's hope we enjoy it!  I've had this recipe for at least a decade, and always wanted to try it, but didn't have Patent flour.  On a recent trip to Restaurant Depot I found a 50lb sack of King Arthur Baking's Special Patent flour.  Originally patent flour was a somewhat more refined flour than an all-purpose or bread flour. These days, the distinction isn't as clear.  Had I known that, I wouldn't have waited so long to make this bread.  On the other hand, some say it is the best bread flour.  We'll see.  Still, as I move further and further into whole grain baking, I am mildly put off by this ultra white (but unbleached) flour.  Still, I'll do anything to try a promising recipe!  (While it is a lot of flour, honestly, it wasn't that bit a deal.  Restaurant Depot charged me $14.00 for the 50lb sack, or less than the price of two sourdough loaves from an artisanal bakery, or four loaves from the wholesale grocery store.  I'll find some use for the flour.)

And now, let's get into the recipe and processes.  The bakeries use a very thick starter, at 50% hydration, which is fed with a high protein flour, around 14% protein.  I used GM's All-Trumps.  The unbleached and unbromated All-Trumps is available west of the Mississippi river and one of my favorite flours for pizza and bagels.  I've also used King Arthur's Sir Lancelot and Honeyville Grain's Imperial flour with good results.

The starter is fed every 8 hours and kept at 75 to 80F.  I fed it as soon as I arose in the morning, mid-day and again at bed time.  Debbie Wink told me that while some changes in starters show up right away, it takes longer for them all to become apparent.  So, I fed my formerly 100% hydration starter at 50% hydration for 2 days to get the thick starter called for.  Back in 2007 I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Boudin bakery in San Francisco.  They showed us a bus tub filled with their starter.  The baker slapped it, and there was a healthy "TWACK!" sound.  The starter did not show an impression from his slap, the starter did not quiver or move.  Yeah, it was THAT thick.  Think window glazing putty thick.  This starter isn't quite that thick, though if I made a tub full, perhaps it would be more obviously similar.

Starter ingredients and process:

Feeding	Time	Starter	Water	Unbleached All-purpose Flour
1	2:00 PM	3 Grams 1/2 tsp 100%	1.5 Grams 1/2 tsp 50%	3 Grams 1 tsp 100%
2	10:00 PM	All from above 100% (more or less)	3 grams 2/3 tsp 50%	6 Grams 2 tsp 100%
3	6:00 AM	All from above 100% (more or less)	8 Grams 1 2/3 tsp 50%	16 Grams 2 TBSP 100%
4	2:00 PM	All from above 100% (more or less)	20 grams 4 tsp 50%	40 grams 5 TBSP 100%
5	10:00 PM	All from above 100% (more or less)	50 grams 3 1/3 TBSP 50%	100 grams 3/4 Cup + 1 TBSP 100%

This will make 250 grams of starter, but the recipe below only calls for 170.  This is so you'll have some 50% hydration starter left over for next time.

After two days, it was time to make the dough.  Ingredients:

Volumetric Measure (Cups)	Ingredient	Grams	Baker's Percentage
2 1/8 Cups	Water	520 Grams	60%
3/4 Cup	Firm Sourdough Starter	170 Grams	20%
6 2/3 Cups	Patent Flour	870 Grams	100%
1 TBSP	Salt, table	17.5 Grams	2%

The dough at that time would have been kneaded, either by hand or in a mixer.  Once kneaded to the point where it can produce a windowpane, let the dough relax for at least 30 minutes.  The dough is, as expected, a throwback to an earlier time.  It is made at 60% hydration, which takes me back to my earliest baking days when almost all doughs were very thick.  If you are used to 75%, 80% or higher hydrations, this dough will seem to be just too stiff.  It's OK though, just set aside your higher hydration sensibilities for now and work with the denser dough.  Bakers used to wetter doughs just grab the dough and pull it to get a windowpane.  If you try that with this dough you'll just pull it out of the mixing bowl.  The approach with a thicker dough is to pinch off a piece, roll it into a ball, and then tease it between your hands, rotating and gently pulling.  It it forms a membrane you can see light through without tearing, it's good.  If it tears, knead it some more and try again.

Next scale and round the dough.  Cover it and give it a 20 minute proof at 90F/32C.

The original recipe called for us to mold the dough and place on a canvas that has been dusted with rice flour or corn meal. I would have had trouble putting two loaves on canvas in my proofer, so I dusted the loaves with rice flour and put them in bannetons.

Allow to proof for 6 to 8 hours at 85 - 90F/30-32C.

Slash the dough and transfer to a baking hearth.  Failing to slash the dough will result in a wrinkled crust which is generally unsatisfactory since the crust may be the most essential part of this bread.  This bread has a relatively long and cool bake at 45 to 55 minutes at 375-390F/190-199C.

It is essential to have a very wet oven.  Steam before putting the bread into the oven, and continue to steam for the first half of the bake.

The warm rise was a bit of a surprise as we have so often heard about longer, cooler rises.  We'll play with that in the future.  Also, the team reported that reducing the salt from 2% to 1.75 or even 1.5% increased the dough rise without appreciably impacting the souring of flavor.  We'll play with that also.

The papers were a goldmine of information about sourdough!  Some of the highlights:

• Sourdough yeast does not consume lactose, but sourdough bacteria do so they aren't competing for the same food source.
• Bakers yeast will consume lactose, and when put into sourdough it competes with the sourdough bacteria and yeast, to the detriment of the bread and all three organisms.
• Sourdough starters and sourdough bread dough commonly reduce their pH to around 3.9, which is comparable to the acidity of pickles.

 

Tasting notes....

We're rebels around here.  You know that.  So, one loaf was baked on a hearth as described above.  The other was baked at 500F/260C in a Dutch oven for 20 minutes, then the bread was uncovered and baked for another 25 minutes at 450F/232C.

Both were milder than I would have expected from a San Francisco sourdough bread.