Waiting for Go-Dough

In which I set out to capture a sexy Spanish yeast; plus my legendary sourdough pizza recipe.

In the early nineties, I found myself—quite abruptly—living in a small, whitewashed house on the southern coast of Spain. The reason is so deeply convoluted that it would require further reading to explain (i.e. in Rottenkid: A Succulent Story of Survival.)  At the end of the long drive from London, I pulled up to the little house in Estepona in a three-ton truck full of climate-inappropriate mahogany furniture, copper pans, and many cookbooks. Gazing across the limpid sea to the brown hills of Africa, one thought was uppermost: this new, as yet undefined life would have to be very, very cheap. Across the turbulent decades of a free-lance life, one truism has haunted me: “Money but no time, or time but no money.”  I was about to enter a prolonged phase of the latter state. 

So. Grow vegetables, forego restaurants, make my own clothes—sure. Perhaps I could pretend to be a pioneer; it might even be fun. I ordered pure Irish linen from a mill in Ireland, dyed it yellow in my washing machine, and crafted an unexpectedly cute outfit from an air-mailed Vogue pattern. One economy I didn’t expect to adopt, in a Latin country, was baking bread. Yet now when I look back on that three-year learning curve, it is my capture and exploitation of the wild yeasts in the Spanish air that resonate most profoundly. 

In the end, it was more a matter of preference than economy: the Spanish bread of that era was not baked to last. In the morning, it was crusty outside and tastelessly fluffy within—perfect for dunking in chocolate a la taza (thick, hot breakfast chocolate). By 2:00pm of the day it is baked, the long loaf may be used as a weapon. In the here-and-now, we are spoiled by the presence of superb sourdough bread (I’m looking at you, Tim Veatch), but in Spain, then, there was no ciabatta or rustic boule, no tangy-chewy lasting loaf. So with the aid of a seven-page recipe from Alice Waters, I set out to create my own sourdough culture from scratch. I will not go into the long process required, but please know that it involved intentionally-rotted potatoes. (“Fermented” is a much nicer word. Don’t you think?)

Wild yeast is gutsy, but ephemeral, stuff. It’s all around us in the air, and if you create a nurturing environment it will touch down and kiss the floury slurry just like a fairy. Once you have captured some yeast, you must protect the delicate culture as a mother does her young: keep it safe from extremes of temperature and too-powerful, soul-free commercial yeast, and feed it gently, watching it rise up eagerly—then use its enthusiasm to create dough and feed it again, quickly, before it can collapse, starved and exhausted, deflating like a punctured beach ball. If any of these extreme conditions occur, it will die. 

One hot afternoon in Spain, I was unavoidably detained (at a beach bar). When I returned home some hours later, my dough had escaped its bowl and migrated across the counter, then down to the floor, seemingly engaged in a mad dash toward the door. Then, suddenly, when all the starches had been consumed, it had simply given up the ghost.  I stood severely admonished, guilty, and started a whole new culture.

In San Francisco, they say, there are sourdough cultures that date back to the Gold Rush. In Italy, Neapolitans protect their age-old cultures with gangster-like brio. You see, not all yeasts are equal—or so the bakers of the world believe. Each region’s yeasts have a particular character, and the bread or pizza that is leavened by this naturally-occurring entity will boast a flavor impossible to recreate elsewhere. The benevolent yeasts I captured in Estepona allowed me to craft bread of great complexity, lasting power, and sweet nurture. The two voluptuous loaves I created every week became emblematic of my new-found self-sufficiency.

But with time, the temperamental nature of sourdough starter became too much for my heart to handle: while concentrating on something else, I had simply killed too many of them. The guilt was soul-sapping. So I researched, exhaustively tested, and eventually adopted another approach to creating the tangy, translucent loaves and pizzas that I craved. I’m publicly sharing the recipe here for the first time.

For the dough geeks out there: This is a high-hydration (@67%), 48- or 72-hour cold-fermented dough that uses a teensy amount of dry commercial yeast to jump-start the fermentation; after that, the wild yeasts take over and get intimate with the starches in the flour. Then, they magically transform that white, pasty mass into a spectacularly-holed, almost translucent entity of living, breathing magic. (Which can not be killed by my inattention.)

Note: You might imagine that such high hydration would make the dough messy and sticky to work with. Just use rice flour instead of wheat flour along with your trusty bench scraper, and you’ll form, press, stretch, and top with blissful impunity.

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Tidbits For The Week of April 8

Brigit’s What I’m

CURRENTLY LOVING ➡️ The riotous displays of new, green growth exploding around me
THINKING ABOUT ➡️ The pistachio cannoli in my future
LISTENING TO ➡️ This Ain't Texas. (I mean seriously—how could you not?)

1. Brigit Binns’ 48 OR 72 Hour cold-fermented pizza dough

Makes six @9.5-ounce balls, OR seven 8-ounce balls

½ cup warm water (105-110°; @15 seconds in microwave)

Scant ½ teaspoon active dry yeast

24 ounces “00” flour (1 lb 8 ounces)

10 ounces bread flour (for a TOTAL flour weight of 2.2 lbs/1 kilo)

1 tablespoon fine sea salt

2 ¼ cups cold water

1 tablespoon olive oil

Rice flour, for shaping the balls (see Note below)

1. Place ½ cup warm water in a small bowl (or measuring jug) and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon active dry yeast. Let stand for 5 minutes, until foamy.

2. Place both the flours, salt, yeast-water mixture, and remaining water (2 ¼ cups, cold) in bowl of a large Kitchen Aid stand mixer (lift-bowl, not tilt-head) fitted with the dough hook. Mix on “2” for 3 minutes, until all flour from bottom of bowl is incorporated. Drizzle with the olive oil and mix on “2” for 2 minutes more. Turn mixer off and loosely cover bowl with plastic or a towel. Let rest for 20 minutes.

3. Mix again at “2” for 3 minutes more. Transfer to a lightly oiled Cambro or large, tall bowl. Cover with lid or plastic and refrigerate for 48 hours. Remove from the refrigerator and let the container stand for 1 to 2 hours at room temperature (less in summer; more in winter).

4. About 1 hour to 1 ½ hours before baking, gently scoop all the dough out onto a lightly rice-floured surface and continue as below.

5. Divide dough into 8 equal pieces; form into 8 very firm balls, creating surface tension, and place, at least 3 inches apart, on lightly rice-floured parchment in covered proofing boxes. Let rise for about an hour before making pizzas.

Note: This amazing dough is very wet, @67% hydration, for the baking geeks. (That’s what makes it rise so well.) Thus, you will need adequate flour when handling it, to stop it from sticking to your hands or any surfaces. I use rice flour for shaping bread and pizza dough before baking because it falls off in the oven, rather than sticking to the exterior, as does regular wheat flour. I find the resulting crusts to be less powdery and dry, more translucent.