Sourdough Bread
Alright, I gave in, finally. I am a bread baker, but I never could gather the patience to try sourdough, plus I really didn’t understand it. Feeding the starter seemed so wasteful to me. Then one day, a friend was going away for 2 weeks and asked me to babysit and feed his starter. He said I was the only person he trusted (gulp). So I had to do it, which meant I had starter to actually use. I tried my hand at baking and was completely hooked. Now I feed my own starter weekly and bake this bread weekly. Sometimes I try a mix of bread vs regular flour and the recipe is the same, the result different. This is a pretty easy and failsafe recipe.
Ingredients
225 Grams ripe Sourdough Starter (it’s ripe when it is bubbly)
400 Grams warm water
18 grams salt
600 grams bread or regular flour. If you use whole wheat, you will need to add more water or it will be dry
Optional: dried herbs (1 tablespoon is enough)
Directions
Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl using a bench scrape to combine. It can be craggy and dry looking at this stage. Cover tightly with plastic wrap (not a dish towel) and let sit for an hour. Pull and fold the dough in the bowl 10-12 times, working your way around so the dough starts to come together. To do this, you take a piece of the dough, pull it towards you, fold it back over the top and press down. Cover and let sit another hour.
Do this 3 times and then stick in the fridge for 12-48 hours. Remove from fridge and let sit on the counter, covered, for 3 hours.
Meanwhile: In the last hour, turn on the oven to 500 degrees to preheat. I prefer to use a cast iron or clay pot to cook my sourdough but if you don’t have one, you can place your ball of dough on a pizza stone. In either case, you have to heat the stone or the vessel with the oven- don’t stick a cold pot on a hot oven or it can crack. If using a stone and not a vessel, put a cast iron frying pan under the rack with the stone. You will use this to create steam which will yield a nice crust.
After the dough has been sitting out on the counter for 3 hours, dump it on to a sheet of parchment and shape into a ball. If you are going to bake in a vessel, I don’t really touch the dough at all because it will expand to meet the sides of the vessel anyway. If you are planning to go freestyle, then you might care a little more about the shape.
To bake in a vessel, open the oven door and either full remove the hot vessel onto your countertop, or remove the top with the bottom still on the rack. Lift the parchment by the sides and lower the dough and parchment into the pot. This is key- I learned the hard way that the dough will stick to the pot no matter how much you oil it so use the parchment! Put the lid back on and into the oven it goes. Lower the heat to 475 and let bake for 25 minutes. Remove the top and let it go another 20 or until the internal temp is around 210 F.
If you are not using a pot, add the dough on the parchment to the pizza stone. Add about a cup of water to the skillet under the dough and shut the door. Lower the temp to 450 and bake for 40-45 minutes. Check the temp and color for doneness.
Let cool for an hour before slicing. Store in a plastic bag for a week
