I do have a bubble chart similar to the Sour Flour Structure for the Training Manual, but it is currently being borrowed by someone else. I made it at the same time, and I will be interested to see what my thoughts were surrounding the Training Manual 10 months ago. But more importantly is what my thoughts surrounding it are now. I want to teach people how to make bread. Not just make bread, but master bread. I want the bread from any Sour Flour Baker to be the best bread any person eating it has ever tasted.

The 4 reasons I initially gave for why I would be working with bread were:
- Everyone eats it
- It’s been around for a long time
- It’s very simple
- It’s very complex

The Training Manual is supposed to combine the complexity and the simplicity. It is supposed to show how easy it is to make bread, but also how customizable it is.

From the beginning, people have always been able to come over and help make bread. Even when the operation moved into La Victoria, and we were producing bread to sell, people who had never baked a loaf before came in to help shape or mix the dough for our production. I also will talk to people about bread for just about however long they want to, trying to explain pieces of what I’ve learned. There has been so much interest, and I see that a huge amount of people seem to want to learn about bread. But I’m beginning to move away from trying to serve the massive community of aspiring amateur bakers. I want to serve aspiring master bakers.

Through Sour Flour, I’ve learned a ton about baking, but I am far from being a master baker. It’s been about a year and a half now, and although I could have done certain things to improve my skills faster, there has been a steady pace of improvement throughout. And it’s still continuing. I’ve been the test case for a Sour Flour Baker, and now I’m looking for other people who would like to become Sour Flour Bakers.

What is a Sour Flour Baker?

A Sour Flour Baker knows how to combine flour and water to make bread.
A Sour Flour Baker knows how to feed their starter, and gauge how active it is.
A Sour Flour Baker gives away bread to their community.
A Sour Flour Baker is always trying to improve their bread.

Want to become a Sour Flour Baker? Anyone one can do it, but it does take time, and persistence, and patience. If you’d like to learn more about bread, keep reading, start writing, and practice baking on a regular basis. Then email danny@sourflour.org, or call the Sour Flour Hotline at (415) 509 – 3380.

To keep the routine simple, I’m trying to make it so that I can wake up each morning to already proofed loaves, so I can turn the oven on first thing in the morning. This means that I want to have the loaves shaped the night before, which usually ends up being close to the last thing I do before going to sleep. Getting the timing down so that the loaves proof perfectly over the 8-10 hours that I’m sleeping is the challenge. In order to do so, I have to gauge the activity level of the dough, and make sure that I’ve formed the proper structure.

There is infinite variety of the bread you could make with the above requirements, using just flour, water, and salt. Considering we have locked down one of the variables, time (wanting to proof for about 9 hours), and our temperatures will be given to us (it seems to be around 62F for me currently at night), we get to play with the 3 factors of hydration, feeding ratio, and type of flour.

My latest batch has 71% hydration (creeping up from 69% I was doing earlier), 210g Dulce (my starter) for 1550g dough (which would be a 7X expansion, and around 50% Artisan Bakers Craft (a regular white flour from Central Milling), and 50% Old World Mill (from Giustos; not quite sure what it is, but it’s sorta between whole wheat and white). I also get to play with time a bit. Depending on when I first mix my dough, that will add to the fermentation time; I’ve generally been mixing as late as I can get away with. This is where techniques for building structure come into play.

The stiffer the dough, the more intensive you would want to mix it, meaning it would take less time overall. As the doughs get wetter, they need more stretch and folds, followed by rests. But also, as you stiffen the dough, you also restrict its activity. This means you might want to compensate by using more starter, or having a warmer proofing environment. Also, as you change your flour mix, you will want to change your hydration to achieve similar stiffnesses. For example, if I made my dough with only 25% Old World Mill, I might drop the hydration to 68% for a similar dough; if I only used Old World Mill, I might go up to 75%.

The expansion factor of the dough is a useful gauge, but it really only gives an indication of the activity you are infusing into the dough. To get a better idea of how active your dough is going to be, you need to know how active the starter that you used in your dough is. A 10X expansion of an extremely active starter will move a lot quicker than 4X expansion of some sluggish starter. Getting to know your starter, and get it where you want it right before you use it is the key here. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of baking.

I get a good indication of what has happened when I see the proofed loaves in the morning. Because I keep their weight the same each time, depending on how well they fill out the basket, I can see how much gas has been produced. But the analysis of the loaves goes beyond that. Next, I need to flip the loaves out of the basket, onto the peel, and make sure they still hold up; then they have to retain their form as I score them. The amount of oven spring also gives me some indication of their general activity. But the final test doesn’t happen until I cut them open and eat some bread. Depending on the texture, lightness, and flavor, I decide how I want to change the loaves for next time.

Reading the Bagel Monday Weekly Review from August 16th, I noticed that I had given good detail about bagel formula and results, as well as where the bagels were going for that day. I had also switched over to paragraph form, instead of the usual item listing. I remember it took me longer than I expected, and got caught up rushing to finish it early. The only Section covered was Bagel Monday, but the idea I had at the time (and at other times), was that perhaps the Bagel Monday Weekly Review should only cover Bagel Monday, and each other section would follow one per day for the week.

But I have not been following that process, so for the time being, I think we should attempt to cover each section if possible. The problem for me has been the overwhelming nature of it, and trying to take it all on myself. We continue to have people volunteering to help out, but actually utilizing that help has been a difficult task.

Nothing in particular was laid out to do in the last Review, but moving forward we will be using this as a document to guide the week.

Bagel Monday
We followed the same 52% hydration for the bagels, which I had remembered liking so much from 2 weeks prior (and I think last week was probably similar, but I’ve got no notes). I also kept the expansion factor at around 10X. But in addition to the regular bagels, we had requests for egg bagels. I had never done egg bagels, but I figured it would be similar. I cracked 6 eggs, weighed them, added the small amount of starter and salt, and then the appropriate amount of flour to get to 52% hydration. However, I realize that what I was considering “hydration” was actually the water from the starter and the total mass of egg (which I was thinking of as liquid); “hydration” is the wrong term here, because it refers to only water.

I also made a regular batch of bagel dough with the same proportions, but water substituted for the egg. The egg dough felt a bit stiffer, as if a comparable hydration might have been 50%. Because I had two stiff doughs to work, I moved back and forth between the dough balls, to let one rest as I kneaded the other. I was probably busy weighing, mixing, resting, and mixing for about half an hour; then I came back about an hour later and did a bit more.

In the morning, the dough had only barely risen, and I was worried that I had underfermented them (meaning I should have used more starter, or had my starter more active), but when I got them onto the bench, they seemed ok. The egg dough was extremely stiff, which made them difficult to seal, but I could forcibly pinch them shut. The regular bagel dough was nice to work with, but I think just slightly on the wet side. I’d lower the hydration to 51% or 51.5% for the next batch.

The egg bagels baked a bit quicker in the oven, and puffed out nicely. They actually exploded their side seems in the oven, and I got a sort of bagel ear (the ear is normally from the slash on top of a loaf). I imagine that they were bigger because of the effectively stiffer dough, which would be stronger. Also, because of the timing of the fermentation, the slower fermenting stiffer dough might have had more kick for the oven.

I gave 2 bagels to my new upstairs neighbor, Elizabeth. Kari, who had heard about Sour Flour through a friend, came and picked up 4 bagels. Then, my good friend Elliott came over to help deliver some bagels to 331 Cortland. He is signing on to be our first expert Bagel Courier. We need people to help deliver bagels by walking, skating, biking, taking MUNI, and or taking BART. I actually prefer the walking part, and think things should go slow. I froze the rest of the bagels, and gave 4 to Drew, our Head Taster.

I really love Bagel Monday, and am trying to fully embrace this routine I have setup. The day always passes me by so quickly, and I never feel like I’m able to fully do everything I’ve got planned out, but I will just continue to try. I was also able to do a few loads of laundry, sweep my house and stairs, and go through everything in my physical and virtual inbox.

- We need to get a consistent supply of cream cheese. This should be made by someone, and regularly.
- Will be following up with Elliott to get another delivery route for next week. Let me know if you’d like bagels delivered.
- I suppose for the time being I am back to being Bagel Monday Program Coordinator. I’m still looking for someone to either help out, or take control of this position.

Bread Education
Bread Education is the new focus for Sour Flour. We have a Goal of Training 100 Sour Flour Bakers, and that is also the most feasible method for the continued financing of the Sour Flour operation. Although I still have not figured out exactly how the costs will work, I see lots of potential for how funding for Sour Flour could come through the Bread Education.

We have jumped in to our first workshop in a long time at the Eat Real Festival in Jack London Square. I had sent the first ever message to the Sour Flour Bread Education List letting them know about the workshop, and also as a way to get back into engaging with communication. The workshop revolved around starters, and for about half an hour I spoke on stage about how you can affect a starter, and answered questions from the audience. Then we gave starters to everyone who wanted one, which actually turned out to be probably around 50 people (although I didn’t count). Anh-Thu helped me give out starters, and talk to people about feeding them and what to do with them.

We got 21 people to sign up on our Bread Education List, even though I completely neglected to mention anything about it, or even have the sign-up available during most what was going on. The next day, I summarized what we had talked about, and sent a message out to the new list letting them know about how they could learn more.

- More writing will be done to fill out topics that have been started, as well as new topics.
- Our next Workshop will be at the Underground Market; planning should happen on what we will do for it.
- We should create a calendar, and fill the events ahead of time.
- We will be engaging more with the Bread Education List
- We’d like to encourage people to write on Sour Flour about bread

Communal Oven
The Communal Oven is currently on a bit of hold. We still have potential availability at La Victoria, but at some point we will make further plans for a real Communal Space. One idea I had recently was to build an oven at Chicken John’s place. Oven building is a topic which I will delve into at some point, but I’d like to not spread myself too thin at this point.

Communications
Communications have improved recently, but consistency will be the key. I’ve reconnected with a few of the people who I had lost touch with, and know that there are many more that would like to be involved as long as we stay communicating. We should have daily writing at a minimum, and much more is needed beyond that. I will soon be working with Elaine Elinson, who is a Communication Consultant, on another project, and look forward to learning more from her. I like talking in person the most, but am just starting to reconnect with this online platform we’ve got.

Finance
Sour Flour is not in the best financial situation at this point. We owe our flour people, Central Milling, as well as some people who have worked at 331 Cortland for us. We will be getting a small amount of money back from our deposit at 331 Cortland, and also have some credit at La Victoria. We are pursuing paid workshops as our primary source of income at this time. The exact model has not been worked out yet, but we will begin with a few different kind of events, and see what seems to work. Somewhere in our general plan is also writing for grants, or fundraising from individuals and foundations. However, because the Bread Education will both raise money, and teach people how to bake, we will be pursuing that for now.

Operations
We are now officially done at 331 Cortland. This is a huge relief for me, because it frees up my schedule massively, but its also a nice mental release. We have not been selling bread for over a month, and Cortland did not make sense for us at this point. There was too much for me to deal with on my own, and so much got left undone. Operations have not really had a stable platform for a while, but I will be working on setting up a system that makes sense for this new phase we are in. Bagel Monday Weekly Review is a start, but there is much more work that needs to be done throughout the week. Much of it needs to revolve around actual Bread Education.

Improving Baking Skills
I have not had too much focus on this recently, but I am continuing to bake many days out of my home oven. I hope as I work with more people to teach them, I will learn a lot more myself. I should also look for a good new bread book to read. I will be doing a lot more writing about bread, and in doing so, I will be thinking a lot more about the theoretical side of bread production.

For the time being, please email danny@sourflour.org your articles.

You will learn how to gauge its activity by looking at its level, quality, and frequency of bubbles (for wetter starters) or volume growth (as the starters get stiffer). You will also be smelling the starter, as it is continually fermenting and changing. Tasting the starter will give you a sense of the acidity, and many of the other changes in flavor.

The 5 main variables you can use to affect your starter are:
1. Time
2. Temperature
3. Hydration
4. Feeding Ratio
5. Type of Food

As you learn how your starter behaves, you will be able to affect many qualities of your bread. The next necessary skill is learning how to create the structure to hold all the gas that the starter produces.

I arrived at around 10:30AM, and was initially worried by the lack of people walking around. I had been to the Eat Real Fest last year, and remembered far more people. By 10:45AM, the area around the stage they had setup for me was completely empty. But as we got closer to starting, more and more people started filling in, until I had a fairly large gathering of people to talk to about bread and starters.

I had not really prepped for this event at all, which I suppose is typical for me. But once things started, it was nice talk be able to just talk about bread and have people listen. I went on for about 20 minutes, and easily could have done more, but I only had an hour total of time for the area. We opened it up for questions, and got some good participation from the audience. I realize that this is one of my favorite parts of the operation, and definitely want to do more general theory talks to large audiences; the other two modes of teaching, in small groups, or individually also have their benefits, but I suppose each way is just different. Things got a little hectic when we started the last part of the event, which was giving away starters. We had a large line of people, and were both giving people some starter, and helping them feed their starts with flour and water. Anh-Thu helped with the passing out of starters, and also to engage with some of the audience. Many people had questions, and although I was able to talk to quite a few people, I realize that the demand for my time far outstripped how much I was able to handle; a good thing I suppose.

After the workshop, I got invited for some photo shoot for an article for the New York Times Magazine. It was cool to do some photos with Eskender, of Radio Africa & Kitchen, and Iso of ForageSF and the Underground Markets; Eskender I had met at a dinner he did at La Victoria, and Iso I’ve worked with many times and am friends with. Not sure if the photos will actually run, but it was fun; we ended up leaving the square to find something to forage, and actually ended up finding wild tomatoes, which were tasty.

It was also nice to see a lot of other people I’ve met through the SF food scene. I got to say hi to Dante, of Good Foods Catering and Ed and Jason of Adobo Hobo. I got to sample a delicious sisig taco, and adobo sandwich from Will, of HapaSF. Roger, of Soul Cocina, gave me some very tasty bhel puri, and I got to use his pedal powered blender to help blend some chutney. I also ran into Debra, who runs 331 Cortland, and saw Josh, of Bernal Cutlery. I wish I had more time to wander around, but I had to leave to go work one of my last shifts at 331 Cortland.

It was interesting for me to think back to the Eat Real Fest from just a year earlier. At that event, I had come along with the Sexy Soup Cart, and was passing out tons of free bread, and getting people signed up for Bread Education. It was cool to see that a year later, I have immersed myself with a huge part of what embodies the festival. We got even more sign-ups than the year before, with very little effort. I also saw how drastically inefficient I continue to be. There were many opportunities to do so much more than we did, but I continue to take things slowly. We had been offered to do a Craft Collaboration, with June Taylor James, and Andate Dairy, but I ended up declining, being generally overwhelmed with where to take Sour Flour at this moment. We also could have sold bread, but considering the selling operation ended over a month ago, that revenue was left untapped.

It was nice to see so many people interested in bread, and in the event in general. This is coming at a fairly pivotal moment for myself, and for Sour Flour, as I try to keep the organization running. I think coming into the event, I had pictured that either the event would be demoralizing with a lack of interest, or my ability to generate that interest, or that I would be moved to push forward with Bread education. I’m happy to say that this pushed me further in the direction of really trying to make Sour Flour work.

Moving forward, our next step is to set up a workshop where people actually pay. I have been advised to do this for a long time, but have liked keeping things free, and so have heavily resisted it. But considering the need for cash at this point, and people’s desire to learn more about bread, I think I’m ready to set it up. The other possibility is general fund raising, or getting grants, but that is a whole other realm, which will have to wait for another time.

It was La Victoria’s 60th anniversary, and although the party was small, there was a lot going on. Roger, from Soul Cocina, was cooking up another amazing meal, I got to see Will and his crew from HapaSF, and Mandy was picking up her Wholesome Bakery goodies to deliver to 331 Cortland. Although I had stopped baking at La Victoria a few weeks ago, much had changed already. New racks were setup, everything was rearranged, and I could see La Victoria turning into a more effective communal space. Roger joked that CNN called, asking about info about Sour Flour’s graduation from La Victoria’s incubator program.

Moving my stuff would have been difficult, but luckily Jaime let me borrow the La Victoria van one more time. I had to move 2 giant bins full of flour, about 12 proofing boards, a ton of linen, various buckets, my flipping board, my water sprayer (La Bomba), about 20 baskets, a speed rack cover, and a few random signs and paperwork. I loved my time at La Victoria, and do look forward to its evolution (a new bread oven is coming in soon), and to staying involved. I think one of my bigger mistakes was not documenting more of what was going on; I had plans of starting a blog in Spanish called Diarios de un Panadero.

Although we stopped selling bread well over a month ago, it has taken a long time to move into the next phase of Sour Flour. We had missed our Goal of selling 1000 loaves, which had a fairly demoralizing effect on me. But I learned a lot from what happened. The purpose of the goal was to prove the viability of a business selling bread; although I still believe it is possible, I see that Sour Flour is no where close to being in a position to do it. And I don’t even want to; I like giving away free bread. So we are back to free bread, and are moving on with our next goal of training 100 Sour Flour Bakers.

There is still much to figure out in terms of how exactly Sour Flour will be operating, but I think I’m finally ready to dive in and start doing more. We will be starting with a presentation on making starters at the upcoming Eat Real Fest, and will have more workshops coming soon. One thing I’ve seen throughout all of this is that there is a huge demand for Bread Education. So it is time to start teaching what I’ve learned, and in the process I will be learning a ton more.

Bagel Monday
Almost any bagels I’d make would be better than the completely underfermented, dense, bland bagels from last week, but this week’s bagels were some of the best yet. I did a batch of 28 bagels, which was the same from last week, but modified how much starter I used. I kept the hydration at 52%, using my high gluten flour, and used a 10X expansion factor (compared to the 27X from last time), meaning 345g Dulce for 3450g dough (125g per bagel, 75g extra dough). I mixed the dough heavily for about 10 minutes, then let it rest for 15; when I came back I didn’t fold it too much, but tried to continue to work the flour into wetter parts of the dough, and flipping it over a lot. Half an hour later, I stretched and folded it, then another after that. The dough was very strong, but because my starter was so active, the dough more than doubled overnight (on the counter, maybe 60F). In the morning, the dough was strong, but flexible enough to roll into a nice shape. It dried slightly, so I should have kept the cloth covering a bit wetter. The bagels colored nicely, and the only complaint from Drew, Sour Flour’s Head Taster, was that they were slightly on the sour side. They weren’t super sour, but considering how active the starter was, and how much they rose, it makes sense it would build up some acid. Next time I might try to decrease the hydration slightly, which will also slow fermentation. I thought the bagels were a bit too fluffy, and that the crust didn’t get as crisp as it should. But over all, they were delicious bagels.

I ate a bagel with butter, then Drew made a fried and a scrambled egg for my second bagel. Drew got 4 bagels, and then I went off to La Victoria., and saw Jeff, from PizzaHacker, Roger, from Soul Cocina, and Ricky making tons of pizza in the huge oven. I had my new Sour Flour bag, which Robin sewed and then screen printed at the Levi’s Workshop, full of bagels, and gave them each one. I also gave one to Noemi, who was pretty upset when onetime I didn’t bring her a bagel on one of the Bagel Monday’s. I also gave some bagels to people working for HapaSF, and Luke’s Local, who recently started working there. Jaime also got a bagel, but he ran off before I could talk to him much.

Robin came over, with her mom, to the Sour Flour Lab to pick up 4 bagels. I talked with her mom a bunch about the differences between flour, and the different companies such as Central Milling, Giusto’s, and Gold Medal. Heather came over and got a bagel as well. After that, I ate lunch with my mom at Mr. Pollo, which was a delicious recommendation I got from Roger. She got 3 bagels to save for a lunch tomorrow with Nina and Jack, who might help connect me with La Boulange or Acme.

—– Break For Dinner ——

I managed to freeze 4 extra bagels for myself, which is good because I was almost out. Overall, its been a good Bagel Monday, but I never seem to be able to finish everything I want to. I’ve got 6 other Departments for Sour Flour, but it is already almost time for bed, and I’d be rushing to try to write them out as complete as I’d like. One idea I’ve had is to devote each Department to a day, so that would mean that tomorrow I focus on Bread Education, and the Communal Oven for Wednesday. Bagel Monday still needs an overall Weekly Review, but for this week, I will be cutting things short.

Considering I’m using mainly white flour right now, I’ve decreased the hydration in each batch I’ve done. I do like wet breads, but at this point I’m aiming to get a bit more strength and volume in my loaves, which happens at lower hydrations. So I started at 74%, moved to 72%, and am currently doing a 70% hydration bread. The other thing I’ve started doing is playing with a bit of the rye flour that I’ve got. This batch has 15% rye, meaning of the 901g total flour, 135g are rye, and the rest white (Artisian Bakers Craft. I started my loaves around 10:30AM today, and since I was trying to bake it same day (meaning not a huge amount of fermentation), I used 409g Dulce (my starter) for my 1550g of dough (two 750g, and some extra); that would be a 3.8X expansion factor, which is a decent amount of starter.

Even at 15% rye flour, I’m starting to once again notice how rye is different from wheat. Its a lot stickier, and needs to be handled much more gently. I did my initial mix in the container, just getting most of the water covered with flour, and the starter mixed around. When I got everything onto the bench, the dough still felt dry, but as I massaged it, I felt things getting wetter. I stopped touching the dough at that point, leaving a few lumps in it, and let it rest to absorb a bit of the water and to relax. I came back about 15 minutes later, got all the lumps out, and then let it rest again. I believe I might of worked it 2 or 3 more times over the course of a few hours, each time having it smoothen out, tighten up, and get less sticky. I would have liked to give it one more stretch and fold before its final pre-proofing fermentation, but I had to get on with my day (first of to my Farm to pick up some white squash and collard greens, then to the Free Farm Stand to drop off, pick up, and socialize). When I got back home around 3:30, the dough had risen a bit, but possibly could have gone more. But considering I want to bake these loaves not too late, I got it onto my floured bench, cut it in half, and shaped my loaves into boules.

It’s now been about 3 hours since I shaped the loaves, and I can tell that they are definitely rising and holding their shape. I put the covered bannetons in my sunny windowsill to speed along the process. I’m beginning to realize that with our temperatures in the 60s, things move a lot slower than most bakeries, or even homes across the country (or world) in the summer time. The way many bakeries and home bakers add fermentation time to improve flavor is by retarding at very low temperatures (like in the fridge), but I’m beginning to appreciate more the balance of using moderate temperatures; it’s definitely more difficult than warm temperatures.

I’m going to continue to wait several hours before baking these loaves. My main mistake I believe was not starting the loaves earlier in the day. However, I was sleeping then, and I think the loaves are going to be just fine regardless. One benefit of slightly underproofed loaves, assuming they are stiff enough, is a nicer blooming of the ear. I’m still waiting for a really awesome ear, which I have not gotten in a long time.

Tomorrow is Bagel Monday, so I will hold off on baking any other bread, but I will be back at it on Tuesday. I’m only baking 2 loaves at a time now, and I imagine I might want one of them, but there is another that is up for grabs; let me know if you’d like it.