White sourdough loaf
White sourdough bread with orange jam and cultured butter
Incoming sourdough history lesson. If you want to skip the lesson, feel free to scroll down!
As Marilyn Monroe quite famously said, “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”. But if I could have my way, I would change that statement to “carbs are a person’s best friend”. Okay, I can’t see the phrase sticking with some people nor am I going to force it on anyone. However, I can use it for myself and that probably won’t change. Also, if you follow me online, it shouldn’t be surprising that I would be relating such a phrase to myself.
Right, back to the topic at hand, sourdough! I’ve been making sourdough for a few years now and I must admit that it’s been … a journey. Why a journey? Well because I’ve had my fair share of highs and many many lows. Sourdough with any craft that you take up is one of those things where people assume that you can follow the recipe line by line and it will be perfect. To those people who get it the first time round, I’m kinda jealous. However, for me, I definitely found that many hours of practising, reading up on food science and having some “interesting” outcomes now means that I actually feel quite confident with my sourdough technique.
So first question, what exactly is sourdough? Sourdough is a bread that is naturally fermented as opposed to using commercial yeast. It has been around for centuries, with the earliest records of sourdough being used by the Egyptians in 1500 B.C. Sourdough’s fermentation is due to a product called a starter. A starter starts as a flour and water mixture and when left alone for a few days, it will break down and form an environment consisting of lactic bacterias. Flour grains and the surrounding air contain an abundance of wild yeast, which when combined within a lactic bacteria environment can thrive and be used to make bread. Due to the nature of a starter, you have to feed it regularly otherwise these wild yeast will sadly die. How often you feed your starter is dependent on how often you want to make bread. If you want to make bread every day, then I’d keep your starter on your kitchen worktop. Personally, I keep mine in the fridge as I make bread on a weekly basis. For this recipe, I have assumed you make bread about once a week.
A few points before we get to the recipe. This recipe was developed based on my general work from home schedule, leading to natural “checkpoints” for when you can stop and come back to the bread making process. Next, although it is possible to make sourdough in one day, the slower reaction time in comparison to conventional yeast from the stores meant that I found that process quite labour intensive. Therefore, I’d highly recommend making this recipe over a few days. The flour and hydration level choice was purposely done to make this recipe as beginner friendly as possible. The final result will be brilliant! Once you’re more confident with this process, experiment using different flours and hydration levels. I’ve also found that your sourdough gets better once you understand your kitchen environment more, so although I put in timings they may vary for your kitchen.
For this recipe, I have made two assumptions. Firstly, I assume that you don’t have a dutch oven. Although dutch oven bread is amazing, it can be quite expensive and I want to make this recipe as accessible as possible. I suggest that you bake your bread on a pizza stone, however, a heavy baking tray will be sufficient. Secondly, I assume that you have an already established starter. If you don’t already have one, I would ask either as an artisan bakery or a regular sourdough baker friend, who would be happy to give you some of theirs in my opinion. Regarding the instructions, I have indicated what instructions should be done on what day and time in italics.
I like to serve my sourdough with jam and butter. Let me know if you want a jam recipe!
Ingredients
Active starter
Jar of inactive starter from the fridge
40 g strong white flour
40 g lukewarm water
Bread
420 g strong white flour
230 g lukewarm water
10 g salt
120 g activated starter
Equipment required
Large mixing bowl
Clean Tea towel
Cling Film
Spatula
Glass Jar
Proofing basket (Tea towel and a large bowl also works)
Pizza stone (heavy baking tray also works)
Shallow baking tray
Chopping board and parchment paper
Pastry brush (optional)
Bread lame (sharp knife will work)
Dough scraper (your hands can work for this too)
Instructions
Day 1 - 8 pm start: Take your jar of inactive starter from the fridge and leave it on your kitchen work top to come back to room temperature.
Day 2 - 8 am start: Take 40 g of inactive starter and put it into a glass jar. Next, feed it with 40 g of flour and 40 g of water. Cover with clingfilm and leave it on your kitchen worktop. With the remaining inactive starter, feed it and place it back in the fridge.
Day 2 - 5 pm start: By now the starter mixture that you made should be ready. To check that it’s ready, place a tiny bit with a spoon into a glass of water. If the starter floats, it’s ready. If it's not, leave that starter for a couple more hours and repeat the same test. Once your starter is ready, mix the flour, water, salt and activated starter in a large mixing bowl to form a scraggy dough and cover with a damp tea towel. Let the dough rest for an hour. This will allow for the dough to grow in strength and the flour to hydrate.
After an hour, take the dough out of the bowl and between your hands, stretch it out until it’s about to tear. At that point, fold the dough onto itself. Next, turn the dough 90 degrees and do the same pull and fold motion. Repeat this step 4 times in total. Finally, place the dough back in your mixing bowl, cover it with a damp tea towel and let it rest for 45 minutes. Repeat this step two more times. After you do the final pull and fold, let the dough rest and rise for about an hour and a half to two hours. This is known as bulk fermentation and it will rise by about 30% volume.
At this stage, the dough has developed enough gluten to be shaped. Lightly flour your kitchen surface and place the dough onto it. Spread the dough out so that it’s a flat circle. Imagining that there are 8 corners around the dough, bring all 8 corners into the centre of the circle, forming a tight ball. Turn the ball around and let it rest for 30 minutes, covering it with a tea towel. Prepare your proofing basket by flouring it generously. Set aside.
Lightly re-flour your surface and your hands. Bring the preshaped dough back onto this surface and reshape it into a tight ball. Place the dough in your proofing basket, cover with a damp tea towel and proof your dough in your fridge for a minimum of 14 hours (i.e. overnight).
Day 3: The nice thing about this recipe is that Day 3 is quite flexible. After 8 hours in the fridge, your dough is mostly dormant, meaning that you can bake your bread when it works for you! I personally bake mine at 9 am so I can have bread for lunch. I would suggest not leaving it for more than 3 days in the fridge as there is a risk for it to overferment, resulting in a flat loaf.
Half an hour before you’re ready to bake your dough, place your pizza stone and shallow baking tray in the middle and bottom of your oven respectively. Preheat your oven to 240 degrees Celsius. Once your oven has preheated, take your dough out of the fridge and turn it out onto a parchment-paper lined chopping board. Remove any excess flour with a pastry brush and score your loaf using a bread lame or sharp knife.
Place the dough with the placement paper onto the pizza stone. Fill the shallow baking tray with lukewarm water to create steam in the oven. Bake your loaf at 240 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Next, turn your loaf around in the oven and bake for a further 20 minutes at 210 degrees Celsius. Take your loaf out of the oven and check that it’s cooked by tapping the bottom to hear a hollow sound.
Let your bread cool for an hour at room temperature and then enjoy!