Sourdough Bread

This is an instructable, mostly for specific people who I’ve given some starter to, in order to help them look after it and make tasty bread from it.

To make 2 1kg loaves of bread:

Starter from the fridge, around 50g is enough

white bread flour, xxxxg (see later for recipes)

spelt flour, xxxg (see later for recipes)

lukewarm water, xxxxg

salt, 2 tsp

Bread tins, 2 (optional, I have these https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01JHZDZJQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1)

bowl big enough to hold your dough with room to expand. I’m talking a really big bowl.

plastic bags to prove dough in

fridge

oven

dough scraper (optional)

kneading board (optional)

I keep my starter in the fridge between baking and depending on how much time I have will either get it out and going the day before or even last thing at night.

There is a bit of a myth about how hard starter is to look after. You will hear lots of people saying it needs keeping alive and feeding every day and being terrified of killing a starter. I have found this not to be true. My starter has been going for 10 years and has not been well treated. I have left it in the fridge for months, frozen it, let it dry out and every time I have been able to bring it back to life with varying levels of effort. I’m currently making bread every week and it lives in the fridge getting ignored between, but up until about a month ago, I’d just make bread when I had some time. It could be 6 weeks between using my starter and for that time it just sat in the fridge ignored. That is about the maximum I have left it in the fridge so I’m confident at leaving it that period. If you know you are going to be away for a long time, freeze it. Before storing, give it a feed. I tend to store about 70g-80g in the fridge with around 40g of that being live starter and the rest being 1:1 water and flour.

Depending on how long it has been in the fridge, it will either just have a skin on with the thick starter underneath or it will have dried out completely. If it has dried out completely, you are looking for the porous slightly softer stickier pieces which will be the fastest to wake up.

I use boiled water for my dough as it is just makes it a bit more consistent, there is nothing scientific behind that. I have a feeling that it may help remove some of the chlorine content from the water and reduce the lime slightly. Not sure this is important but it’s no effort and I know it works so why would I do something different!

So to make bread, I use about 175 grams of fed starter per loaf. I tend to make two loaves in a batch so for me, it’s 350g of starter plus some extra to put in the fridge for next time.

I weigh the starter from the fridge, assume it has a hydration of 100% and then add enough flour and water at a 1:1 ratio to get the amount of starter I need.

So if I take 60g of starter out of the fridge, I assume it has 30g of water and 30g of flour in it.

To make bread I need 350g of starter for the bread, plus 40g of starter for the fridge for a total of 390g. At a hydration of 100%, this would be 195g of flour and 195g of water.

The starter from the fridge has 30g of each so I add 165g of flour and 165g of water to the fridge starter and mix well. Cover and put in a warm place. Overnight is sufficient to bring it back to life but you can take a little bit longer and have a livelier starter.

So having got the starter going again, it should be lovely and bubbly and smell good too. Now is the time to make the dough.

Now there are a million recipes online, so feel free to help yourself to any of them. I’m only really making an everyday bread so it has only a few ingredients:Flour, water and salt. I like the tang that spelt flour brings so I add a percentage of spelt. This is a bit of a cross between recipes from the river cottage bread book and Richard Bertinet and works for me for a normal every use bread.

To be honest, the biggest factor is the hydration of the bread. This is water as a percentage of the flour in the loaf, NOT water as a a percentage of the total dough. This is a bit odd, but seems to be standard way these recipes work. Why, I don’t quite know, but it’s explained better here. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2023/01/11/bread-hydration#:~:text=Hydration%20is%20calculated%20by%20taking,flour%20to%20get%20a%20percentage.&text=Remember%20that%20hydration%20%3D%20water%20%2F%20flour,%2F%201%2C000%2C%20or%2075%25.

The other thing to bear in mind, is as before the water and flour that went into the starter need to be included in the recipe otherwise you’ll end up with a different recipe.

I’ve added my percentage recipes in a picture above but feel free to ignore, oh and tell me if I’ve got them wrong.

So, from here it’s easy. Throw everything in a bowl, mix until it’s sort of a shaggy mixture, turn it out and use the kneading method of choice. For higher hydration breads I like Richard Bertinets method here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cbBO4XyL3iM

Once it’s kneaded to your satisfaction (Again, I use the window pane test https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2022/10/14/what-is-the-windowpane-test-for-bread-dough ) then it’s time for the second prove. Shape it in to a round, lightly flour it and throw it in a bowl. I cover it with clingfilm, not touching the dough, and then put it somewhere warm for between 4 and five hours.

How you treat it during this period depends on the dough you are going to make. I am usually making tin loaves at the moment so I just give it a jolly good ignoring until I think it’s ready.

If you are going to bake a boule or something free standing you need to pay a little more attention. For a loaf that stands on its own two feet, you will need to take it out every twenty minutes or so and give it a stretch and fold. This is simply putting the round on the bench, stretching one side and folding it back on top. Turn the round 90 degrees and do it again. Repeat until you’ve gone all the way round and then shape into a ball again.

There are loads of commentaries on this online, and I still haven’t got the shaping to a point where I can reliably have a loaf that doesn’t collapse so I’ll leave you to your own research here!

So you’ve left your bread for the requisite time and it should be a lot bigger than when you left it. A test for if it’s ready is to give it a prod to leave a dent about a knuckle and a half deep (flour your finger) and then see how enthusiastically it springs back. It should slowly fill the space again, but not all the way leaving a fairly significant depression. It’s now ready.

What you do from here depends on what bread you are making. If you are making a boule it’s time for the important final shaping and then into a banneton. I don’t have this working reliably so I will not comment.

However, if you are making a tin loaf it’s pretty straightforward and less important.

I tip my dough out and then split it in half with my dough scraper (don’t tear it at this point!) as I’m making two loaves. Lay the dough out on a floured board, just enough flour to stop it sticking, and gently shape it out into a rectangle with your fingertips. I try and keep the width here not much wider than my tin and the length isn’t too important.

I then need to make a roll of dough that fits in my tin. I roll from the end closest to me, stretching the dough as I roll it. When I have a roll I place it seam down in my oiled/buttered bread tin. Repeat for the other loaf.

Put it in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge for up to about 20 hours. It’ll be ready to bake anywhere from 12 hours on and the longer it’s left does just change the flavour slightly.

That’s kind of it.

So to baking. Depends on what you want to achieve to what you do.

What I describe here leads to a fairly soft crusted loaf suitable for sandwiches as well bruschetta etc. Basically a good all rounder. For a harder crust which is more traditionally what a sourdough has, leave it uncovered.

I start with my oven heated at 215 C. Put a tray in the bottom of the oven and have the shelves so there is enough room for the bread to spring into. Once the oven is hot, boil a kettle and then fill the tray below with water. Bring the oven back to temperature.

Slash the top of your bread in the fashion you desire and then put the bread in. Bake for 15 minutes at 215 C. You should get all the spring in this period.

At this point, as my family like a slightly softer crust, I turn the oven down to 185 C and cover the bread in silver foil. Leave enough room under the silver foil for the bread to expand a little more. Whether or not you use the silver foil, you should turn the oven down at this point.

Depending on the outcome you want, anything between 190 and 180 C could work. Experiment!

At 185C under silver foil, my bread will be baked at 50 minutes total cooking time.

To check, if you have a probe thermometer, you are looking for an internal temperature above 93C. This will then be cooked through without drying out but a little higher than this isn’t the end of the world.

Et voila! You have achieved bread.