The tale of the biga…

Sweet Potato 5 Spice Bread

If you follow us on Twitter, you’ve probably heard mention of the biga. The biga is bubbling. The biga is happy. Biga, biga, biga, biga, biga! So what’s a biga? A biga is very much like a sourdough starter. It’s a starter that’s often fruitier, and nuttier than a standard sourdough starter. You can use part of your biga in place of (or in addition to) commercial yeast when baking bread. Properly cared for, and rergularly used, a biga can last a lifetime.

So how do you make a biga? Well, my biga started out with a pear from the University District Farmers Market. A friend of mine grated up that pear and used some of the natural yeast that’s on the pear to start her biga. She then added in some flour and water, and left the mixture uncovered to capture wild yeast out of the air. Every day she discarded half of the biga, fed it, kept it warm, and watched it grow. It grew from a white pasty mixture of flour and water to a living, bubbling entity.

Soon she started giving her biga cast offs away. Biga exchanges took place in dark alleys, at Farmers Market booths, and at coffee shops. The whispers grew of an amazing biga, one that could cause dough to rise not only until double in size, but five and six times… of a biga that still smelled like that one original pear, a biga so sweet, and yet so sour, that the sourdough it  made was legendary. (So maybe that last little part didn’t happen, but it should have.)

Soon the friends she gave her cast offs to started giving away their cast offs. We think that some of those recipients have even given away their cast offs by this point. Five, six, seven generations of bigas are living and feeding in Seattle. All because one person bought a pear.

Now that our biga has grown up and is hanging out in our fridge, we’ve started to bake with it. I consider bread pure comfort food. Bread is warm, soft, and rich. A fresh slice of bread, still warm, dripping with butter, wraps your taste buds in a warm blanket. Bread soaks up the very best of your dishes, the sauces that contain the essence of the flavors you’ve imparted to the rest of the meal. Bread can be turned into bread pudding (which we’ll have a Valentine’s Day recipe for by the end of the week) and if you have bread that’s gone stale, just chop it up into cubes, toss with some olive oil, and bake into croutons. Lettuces are just starting to appear at the farmers markets, and I sense salad season will be coming a lot earlier than usual this year.

Sweet Potato Sourdough, adapted from Hoppy Okapi

Mmmm, butter

• 8 oz sourdough starter
• 4 oz water
• 4 oz bread flour
• 2 medium sweet potatoes (10 oz after roasting and mashing)
• 7 oz wheat flour
• 14 oz bread flour
• 1 tsp 5 spice powder (or cumin, or even cinnamon)
• 1 Tbsp salt

1. Combine the starter, 4 oz of water, and 4 oz of bread flour and mix well.
2. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm location (70 degrees) for 2-3 hours.
3. Meanwhile, peel the sweet potatoes, slice into chunks, and roast until soft (400 degrees for 20-30 minutes).
4. Mash or food process and let cool.
5. Once starter mixture has reached peak activity, mix in the sweet potatoes.
6. In a separate bowl, mix the flours, 5 spice powder, and salt.
7. Add the flour mixture to the sweet potato mixture a third of a time.
8. Knead on a lightly floured surface for 5-7 minutes, or until the dough is elastic and just a bit tacky.
9. Place in an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
10. Rest in the fridge overnight.
11. On baking day, divide the dough into three portions and let rest for 5 minutes.
12. Shape the dough into ovals (or really, whatever shape you want), and arrange on a floured parchment paper on a baking peel (or flat cookie sheet).
13. Let rise for 3-4 hours.
14. One hour before baking, place a pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 500.
15. When ready to bake, slash the top of each loaf 3 times and turn the oven down to 450.
16. Slide the bread into the oven and spritz the sides of the oven with water3 times in the first 5 minutes of cooking.
17. Bake for 30 minutes, rotating the loaves halfway through.
18. Cool completely, and serve.

Notes: Sweet potatoes the one food that I’ve missed eating locally the past few years. But with our hot summer this past year and some industrious farmers, sweet potatoes have been practically plentiful this year. I love everything about them – the color, the texture, the healthy antioxidents… ok, so those are just a side benefit. The sweet potatoes turn this bread a beautiful dark orange and temper the sour flavor with a kick of sweetness. The original recipe called for cumin and had I been able to find my cumin, I would have used it, but the 5 spice powder worked well. This bread is so sweet that it can work for just about any meal. Spread some cinnamon spice butterfrom Golden Glen on it for breakfast, or slice it and make french toast out of it. For lunch, it would be perfect with peanut butter and a pepper jelly, or for dinner, have it with chili.

 If you don’t have a starter, you can still bake this bread. In a large container, mix 1 packet commercial yeast, 2 cups of bread flour, and 2 cups of water. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm location overnight. The next day, use 8 oz of this mixture in place of the sourdough starter in this recipe. You’ll lose some of the sour flavor, but the resulting bread will still be lovely.

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Tagged as: Bread, sweet potatoes, yeast