MY LIFE AS A FOODIE
SOUR
DOUGH
Charity Keita makes a quick foray into the
world of delicious sourdough pizza
I
have a friend called Heidi who
hails from a cold Swiss Alpine
town whose name I can’t even
begin to pronounce. In the
summer it is very green and cows
prance around munching on lush and
verdant grass; in the winter people
ski and in the evening, sip schnapps
next to a roaring fire. In my mind’s
eye, I like to imagine Heidi doing her
house chores wearing lederhosen
and yodelling at the top of her lungs.
I imagine her ‘askaris’ curiously
peering through her window, trying
to figure out if that’s a cry for help, or
just some crazy mzungu singing. But
I digress.
On a recent stay at one of the
Kitengela glass homes, Heidi got
invited to breakfast with Nani Croze,
the German owner and founder of
the amazing glass factory. During
the meal, Heidi’s passion for baking
came up, so Nani bestowed upon her
a very special gift. The gift was a jar
containing a 40 year old sourdough
starter.
30.
In case you have never heard
of a sourdough starter, allow me
to explain: a sourdough starter is
a mixture of flour, water and wild
yeast that has been left to naturally
ferment. Before the advent of
industrial yeast, bakers across the
world would carefully nurture their
own sourdough starter that they
would then reuse over again again,
eventually passing it down to the
next generation.
Sourdough is currently receiving
a huge upsurge in popularity, as
experts across the world pronounce
it a healthy alternative to the
industrial sliced loaves that here in
Kenya are so hard to escape from.
The claim is that sourdough has a
lower glycemic index than other
breads, contains healthy bacteria
that does wonders to our digestion,
controls the amount of yeast that
populates our gut and has many
more minerals and vitamins than
industrial bread. Above all, however,
the main attraction in sourdough
breads is the fact they simply taste
better. Their tangy and chewy
consistency is vastly superior to any
of the mass-produced options that
are available on the market.
A couple of months ago during a
visit to London, I had the chance to
taste a delicious sourdough pizza
in a restaurant called Franco Manca.
The consistency was really different
from what I was used to, but it was
the flavour that really got me: never
had I tasted a pizza in which the
dough actually took centre stage. So
when my editor asked me to write a
column about pizza, I decided that
the only option was to enrol Heidi
into my plan and see if we could
pull-off an amazing sourdough pizza
feat.
Unfortunately this is one of the
times in which my harebrained
schemes do not turn out as planned.
When we saw that our sourdough
pizza dough was taking a while to
raise, we decided to make a regular
yeast alternative. Eventually that
experts across the
world pronounce
it a healthy
alternative to the
industrial sliced
loaves that here in
Kenya are so hard
to escape from.
night we went with the second
option, in the hope that the
sourdough would have leavened
better by morning. When I peered
into the bowl the next day, the
dough did seem to have raised a bit,
but only a bit. The resulting pizza
was slightly gummy and had none of
the amazing consistency and flavour
of the one I tried in London.
I suspect the problem may have
been with the starter that had been
lying around the fridge for many
a month and had effectively died.
Heidi might beg to disagree but I can
see no other reason for which the
culture should have failed at creating
the desired leavening.
My only option is to make my
own sourdough starter and at some
point in the not-too-distant future,
try again. That all depends on me
finding some good rye flour. Will
keep you posted.
30.