Sourdough can be as complicated or simple as you would like, so here's a simple recipe to get you through the holidays. Salt, water, starter, and flour come together to make this very basic sourdough, but there's always room for refinement and personal touches.
Don't worry about making a picture-perfect loaf, 'ugly delicious' is a good kitchen philosophy to strive for with sourdough. You want a bread you enjoy making and eating.
You will need a baking scale, dutch oven, and proofing basket to make this recipe work. A bread scraper is also recommended. Bread baking requires accuracy, and a dutch oven will get you a spring and rise close to a commercial oven, which are much better at maintaining heat and managing steam.
This recipe has a loose timeline, which allows for gluten development without too much kneading by hand. You can also cheat a little by adding instant yeast if you're pressed for time, the starter will still add flavour.
Ingredients
- 500 grams all purpose white flour - unbleached, you can specifically use bread flour which has higher protein content and results in better chew. You can also use 125 grams or rye or wheat flour and mix that with your bread flour, if you want something different.
- 375 grams warm water
- 13 grams salt - this will make much of the flavour in your dough, in addition to the starter.
- 60 grams sourdough starter - you're going to have to get your hands on some starter, which can be as simple as a half cup flour, half a cup of water and letting it overnight to attract wild yeasts. Or you can borrow some starter from a baking friend.
- Optional - if you don't have any started, 15 grams of instant yeast and 30 grams of can be used, you make also want to do this for a quicker rise.
Instructions
- The night before you start your bake, mix together your water, flour, and salt in a sealable bowl or whatever bowl you have, with a spatula. This starts the auto-lyse process, allowing the flour to absorb water and develop gluten. Leave overnight, roughly 8 to 12 hours.
- The same night before, or early in the morning, feed your starter - you want to give it a good chance to build up strength. No need to let it double in size or any complicated observation, simply take a small spoonful and drop in a cup or bowl of water, if it floats, you're good to go.
- Add 60 grams of your starter and mix into the dough.
- Take your auto-lysed dough and stretch and fold into itself in the bowl using a spatula, lifting from the bottom and folding onto itself - do this roughly four times, with 30 minutes in between each mix. Leave for another 60 minutes after the last mix.
- The dough needs to proof and should double in size - if you're short for time, add some instant yeast, sourdough starter is a natural leaven and takes longer, depending on how warm or cold your kitchen is.
- Once it's double, mix it into a ball using your spatula and scoop it onto a floured surface.
- Flour your hands and stretch the dough into a rectangle - fold in the sides and then roll from the top towards yourself - this is where a scraper comes in handy, use it to scrape any dough or flour sticking the surface. Add flour as needed to handle.
- Shape into a loaf by essentially rolling the dough, making sure not to disturb any bubbles formed.
- Transfer into a floured proofing basket or banneton - let proof for 90 minutes, again doubling in size, or leave for up to 12 hours in the fridge for a slow proof and ferment.
- Preheat oven to 500 degree Fahrenheit, with the dutch oven preheating for at least 30 minutes - drop the temperature to 425 degrees when the oven heats to 500.
- Flip your shaped dough loaf onto a large piece of parchment paper, score the top, and safely drop into the dutch oven - cover it with the lid.
- Let bake for 35 minutes, and then remove the lid, letting bake for another 10 minutes.
- Safely remove from the oven and place on a baking rack - let fully cool, as it will still be baking on the inside.
