Sourdough Bread

Ingredients

Sourdough bread is made with just 3 ingredients: flour, water, salt. You could consider the sourdough starter as a separate ingredient, but the starter itself consists of only flour and water.

Sourdough is a living food, and as with all lifeforms it behaves differently depending on environmental factors. Water content, humidity, temperature, time will all affect how sourdough behaves. Because of this variability, sourdough recipes are not set in stone. That said, below is the "recipe" I use.

Listed using baker's percentages

• Flour (100%)
  • I have been using unbleached bread flour and whole wheat flour, at approximately 20-40% whole wheat content.
  • How much whole wheat can you add?
• Water 75%
  • Read about sourdough hydration
• Sourdough Starter 10-20%
  • Read about Sourdough starter
  • Read about starter innoculation - You may not need much at all
• Salt 2%
  • How much salt do you need?

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My current experiment

This method is based on Foodgeek's Master Sourdough Recipe, similar to the "Slow Lazy" method except with a shorter autolyse.

Summary:

• Feed sourdough starter
• Let it grow 8-12 hours or until it peaks
• Mix flour, salt, water, starter.
• Autolyse 1 hour
• Stretch & fold; Rest 30 minutes
• Stretch & fold; Rest 30 minutes
• Stretch & fold; Rest 30 minutes
• (Window pane test)
• Bulk rise
• (Divide into desired portions if necessary)
• Shape it
• Refrigerate 8-48 hours
• Bake!

Start

• Mix measured amount of starter into measured amount of water until starter is dissolved
• Separately combine flour and salt, whisk or stir until mostly even.
  • Alternatively, put the salt aside until after the autolyse.
  • According to this experiment by Foodgeek it doesn't make a difference when you add salt to the mix.
• Mix the wet and dry ingredients together until you have a shaggy mess of dough that is more or less even (ie - all the dry flour is mixed in).
• Cover and rest at proofing temperature to autolyse for 1-2 hours.
  • If your oven has a "proofing" setting, use that.
  • If you live in a cold climate and don't have a fancy oven, you can turn on the oven light

Stretch & fold

• Stretch & fold the dough in order not to break the gluten sturcture.
  • Foodgeek has a comparison of methods, and Bake With Jack has a different method.
  • Wet your hands to prevent dough from sticking to your hands.
  • Cover and rest the dough for 15-30 min at "room temperature" (use a shorter rest time if your "room" is warm, longer if it's cold).
  • Repeat the Stretch & fold cycles 2-3 times.
  • Fold in any inclusions you want during the last stretch & fold.

Bulk rise

• Place dough into a bulking container. I have been using a rectangular Rubbermaid container. If you don't have something like this you can probably just cover your mixing bowl with a non-porous wrap.
• Another option is to put a piece of the dough into a small container so the bulk rise is easier to measure.
• Rest until the dough rises 25-50% (ie becomes 125-150% of its original size).

Shaping

• There are two styles I have seen for shaping your dough.
  • The wet method: spray your counter with a light mist of water, and wet your hands.
  • The dry method: lightly dust your counter with flour, and keep your hands dry.
• Carefully dump out the dough.
• If making more than one loaf, divide your dough as needed.
• Shape it

Proofing

• Dust your banneton with rice flour, and transfer your shaped dough loaf into it, "top side" down.
  • Rice flour contains no gluten so it serves as a non-stick barrier between the dough and your container.
  • If you don't have a banneton, line a bowl with cloth. Knit cloth (like a piece of old T-shirt) tends to work better than a dish towel.
• Place in a plastic bag or airtight container, and refrigerator for 8-48 hours
• Longer fermentation time results in a more "sour" flavor, but over-fermenting could tire out the yeast too early which can result in poor oven rise.

(One hour before baking)

• Place a dutch oven inside your oven and preheat to 500F
• Heat the dutch oven for 45-60 min once your oven gets up to temperature

(Baking time!)

• Place your loaf on a piece of baking parchment paper (optional)
• Dust the top of the loaf with rice flour.
• Score the loaf in some way.
  • Scoring the surface allows for a controlled rise.
  • If you don't score your loaf the bread will "rise" through weak spots in the crust so you might end up with a weird explode-y looking result.
• Place your loaf in the dutch oven and cover.
  • I prefer to use the dutch oven upside-down so that the loaf goes into the "top" part and gets covered with the "pot" part.
  • I found that placing the loaf into the pot side resulted in a burned bottom due to more heat transfer from the more massive piece of cast iron.
• Lower the oven temp to 450F and bake for 20 minutes
• Remove the dutch oven cover and continue baking uncovered for 20-30 min

(Done!)

Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.
Allow it to cool to room temperature before cutting into it.