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slice of most home-baked sourdough breads contains no cholesterol and less than 150 calories. For a healthful and durable high-calorie, high-energy snack for kids, athletes, or backpackers, add nuts, seeds, raisins, dates, wheat germ, and anything else you want.

THREE

Putting It All Together
    AS YOU EMBARK on your work with sourdoughs, you’ll experience both success and frustration. Just remember that there is more art (thank goodness) than science in baking as our ancestors did, and the artist learns by doing. But don’t forget why you’re here. Sourdoughs are for fun and personal satisfaction. Your first efforts may produce neither, but if you demand a real sourdough, it will come.
    We home bakers have an enormous advantage over commercial bakers: we can afford to let our doughs ferment while we sleep until they are really ready, not half ready. It is difficult to buy a sourdough bread that isn’t flavored with vinegar or a variety of chemicals to simulate the real thing. You and I bake it in our kitchens with just wild sourdough cultures, flour, water, and time. What we bake is far better than almost anything we buy.
    When I first wrote
World Sourdoughs from Antiquity
, I emphasized activating dried cultures and culture preparation, or proofing, because they are critical in getting the organisms of the culture growing and reproducing. This is a chore almost unique to home bakers, since the challenge to artisan and commercial bakers is to keep their cultures growing at a constant rate—they bake daily or several times a day, usually seven days a week. If you and I bake once a week, it’s probably more frequently than the average home baker, and then the culture goes back to the refrigerator and become semidormant. The next time we use it, we have to get it back up to speed. The first of the three proofs we use, the culture proof, does just that.
Some Notes on Equipment
    Some bakers advocate using wooden spoons for mixing dough to avoid contamination with toxic trace metals. With modern utensils, this sort of contamination is unlikely to occur. Wooden spoons are pleasant to grip but difficult to use for heavy mixing, as they are prone to snap at the handle. Large stainless steel mixing spoons are well suited to the job, but individual preference should dictate your choice. Stainless steel or aluminum mixing bowls are also acceptable. They do not contaminate sourdoughs during the mixing or proofing periods. Heavy-duty plastic bowls are also very satisfactory.
    Loaf pans and baking sheets come in every size and shape. We use metal pans and baking sheets with nonstick surfaces, which do not need to be greased before each use. If glass baking pans are used, the oven temperature should be reduced by 25°F (4°C). For loaves using about 4 cups (560 g) of flour, use 8½ by 4½ by 2½-inch/1½-pound (22 by 11 by 7 cm/680 g) pans. In this book, most of the recipes for shaped loaves are designed to yield 1½-pound (680 g) loaves: if your bread pans are a little bigger or smaller, take that into account when judging whether a loaf has risen enough in the pan during the final, loaf proof. A willow basket for the last rise produces an interesting artisan loaf. Oven-safe stoneware vessels, such as La Cloche, are also popular (see this page for a recipe designed for using a La Cloche).
    A number of the recipes here suggest using a preheated baking stone as a baking surface. These are especially useful for breads requiring high, even temperatures, such as pizzas and flatbreads, though they can be successfully used with many loaves.
The Proofing Box
    A proofing box made from an inexpensive Styrofoam cooler will accurately regulate proofing temperatures, which is important for achieving the desired flavors, leavening, and sourness. Select a cooler large enough to fit upside down over your large mixing bowls—approximately 20 by 13 by 11 inches (50 by 33 by 28 cm). Turn the cooler upside down and install a standard porcelain