Sourdough Bread

Ah sourdough - the queen of quarantine baking! Or is that banana bread? I’m not sure anymore, but if you have been on social media lately I am sure you have seen pictures of or heard people talking all about sourdough bread. I have been taking part in the quarantine baking, making several loaves of sourdough during this extended time at home but my bread journey began a few years ago. There has been a lot of experimentation, so many failures and while I know I still have so much to learn (there will be more sourdough posts to come), I thought I would share my story and what I have come up with so far.

When it comes to sourdough starter, I did try to make my own. That was in the very beginning of this bread making journey in 2018! I read articles and recipes online, I mean its flour and water, how hard could it be? Spoiler: It’s really hard. After over a month of science experiments and multiplying bowls of *starter* taking over our kitchen counter I started to notice mold on some of the containers and decided to throw in the towel. Cleaned up the counters and didn’t try again until about a year later when I bought a dehydrated starter online. 

The dehydrated starter came with good reviews and detailed instructions along with recipes for all the possibilities of things to be made with sourdough! I was pretty pumped to figure this thing out! So I followed the instructions (again started filling the counter top with multiple bowls of starter) and I did start to see bubbles forming and I thought I had it! I made my first loaf and... well, it was DESNE. It was very heavy and very, very difficult to cut. I brought it to a family gathering anyway and the whole thing was eaten. While the consistency was not what I wanted, everyone agreed the flavor was good. So, I kept trying, and made many more odd loaves (mostly dense with the exception of one that was essentially hollow).

Flat, dense loaf.

Completely hollow.

I think Raf began to tire of eating dense bread so he gifted me a sourdough bread making class for my birthday! The workshop was really fun. It was at the Brooklyn Kitchen with Reva Castillenti and she knows what she’s doing. I learned so much from the class and got to take home starter (game changer). I was finally making edible loaves of bread!

Caring for Starter-

So now that I have a viable starter, it needs to be cared for (have you heard sourdough is the new tamagotchi!). I don’t bake super frequently, so I keep my starter in the fridge. When it comes to feeding, I have heard different variations on how often you should feed. I tend to feed mine when I remember or I am about to bake. That means it could be a week or a month in between feedings which I realize may not be best practice but I’m just being honest. And so far it still lives!

When I do feed it, I discard most of what I take out of the fridge and add equal parts flour and water. There are different ratios out there for this, I have seen it recommended to do equal parts starter to flour to water (combine 100g starter with 100g flour and 100g water). I was told from the workshop to use 60g starter to 300g flour and 300g water but I am still experimenting with this topic to figure out what works best for me. I believe any of these ratios will work but the starter contains bacteria looking for food, so the less food you give it, the quicker it will eat what it's given and need to be fed again. As long as you keep an eye on it and don’t starve your starter to the point of killing it, you’ll be good. 

The Process-

The process of getting your dough ready and baking the bread takes a few days. I am going to walk you through the timeline I usually work with if I am going to bake bread on Sunday. I included a cheat sheet at the end of all this because it is possible I am giving too much information.

A few notes before we get into the timeline, flour and baker’s percentages. 

There are a lot of different types of flour you can use (bread flour, whole wheat flour, spelt flour, fresh milled flour etc) I was typically using some combination of bread flour, whole wheat and unbleached all-purpose but with the current situation (quarantine, hey!) all I have in unbleached all-purpose and I’ve still had success making bread with this. Just saying this because if you are starting out you don’t need to buy fancy flours. 

Now, baker’s percentages. This refers to the proportion of an ingredient relative to the amount of flour. The easiest way to explain this is with an example. If you have 100g of flour, (this could be all one type or a combination of flours totalling at 100g) and you add 70g of water, you are making a 70% hydration dough. If we need to add 20% starter to that, we would add 20g of starter. This math is much easier to do with a round number which is why I typically work with 1000g of flour (which makes two loaves of bread). I also usually use a hydration between 70-75%. The higher the hydration the more difficult the dough will be to work with so when starting out I think it would be best to start around 70% and then mess around with it from there. 

Ok, let's get into the timeline:

Friday 8pm:

If I am planning to bake my bread on Sunday, I start the process on Friday night. I take my starter out of the fridge and feed it. This means mixing a portion of starter with fresh water and flour. After it sits for about an hour, I will put some of the refreshed starter into a clean container and back into the fridge (to be used next time I bake). I leave the rest of the starter in a bowl, covered with a damp towel. It will stay here overnight so it has time to get to its super lively and active state (usually about 12 hours). 

Just fed starter.

Bubbly, lively starter

Saturday 9-10am:

Saturday morning I check the starter, it should be super bubbly! If it doesn’t look really active yet you can wait a little longer. If it isn’t bubbly and you see some brown liquid forming on top of the starter, it may have gone past its prime and you will need to re-feed and wait again for it to reach its most active state. Temperature is a key factor in the whole bread making process. Warmer temps get it moving. So if it is the middle of summer the starter will become more active more quickly, whereas in the middle of winter in a colder house it will need a bit more time. 

If the starter looks good, I add 200g of starter to a large bowl. I mix that with 700g of water (making a 70% hydration dough) and use my hand to combine and break up the starter into the water. Then I add 1000g of flour to the water/starter mixture. This will create a shaggy dough that I allow to sit for a half hour. This step is called autolyse and it gives the flour time to absorb some of the water. And it is pretty wild how much the texture of the dough will change in that half an hour. Next I add 25g of salt and use my hands pinching the salt into the dough to thoroughly combine. 

I allow the dough to sit for another thirty minutes before doing the first stretch and fold. To be completely honest here, this is one of the parts that I struggle with every time. To do this, you want to reach under the dough, pull it up and fold back on itself., gently pressing it into the center of the dough. Turn the bowl a quarter-turn and repeat until you make your way around the bowl. Doin this helps the gluten development and strengthens the dough. The process is repeated every half an hour for the next 2 hours, equaling 3-5 stretch and folds, depending on if I can manage to keep track of time. Then its time for the bulk fermentation. I cover the bowl with a damp towel and let it sit for about 4 hours. 

Shaggy dough

After a few stretch and folds, beginning to look smooth.

Saturday Night:

Once the dough is proofed, it is time to shape. I dump the bowl of dough out onto a lightly floured surface, evenly divide into two sections and do a quick and gentle shaping to make rounds and then allow to rest for about 15 minutes. While the dough is resting on the counter I usually prep two bowls layered with a clean tea towel and a good coating of rice flour to prevent the dough from sticking.

Next, it is time for the final shaping. There are so many methods to do this and I am still working to get it just right. In this step we want to create our shape (I usually make a round loaf) and also create tension on the dough surface. I feel like the best way to understand this is to watch a video but I am going to do my best to explain. I typically flatten the dough out a little by pulling on the edges (you don’t want to roll the dough). Then grab the top two corners, pull and fold and gently press into the middle of the dough. Then pull outside top corners and do the same thing. Then grab the outside edges (opposite sides), pull them and tuck them into the center of the dough. Do the same thing with the bottom edge, pulling and pressing into the middle. Then fold in half from the top to the bottom and roll over so I am now looking at the smooth side of the dough. I will gently roll the dough between my hands, not flipping but creating a slight pull on the bottom to firm up the tension on the top which should be nice and smooth now. Then carefully lift the dough and place it top (smooth) side down in one of the prepared bowls. Repeat with the second loaf, cover and move into the fridge to hang out over night. 

Loaves are shaped, seam side up, ready to go in the fridge overnight.

Sunday Morning:

I take the bowls out of the fridge and place on the counter and move my dutch oven in the oven to preheat to 450 degrees. I want the oven and dutch oven really hot so I let it heat for about an hour. When the oven is ready, take the dutch oven out and the top off. Then turn one of the bowls over onto a piece of parchment paper and score the top of the bread. Scoring allows gasses to escape the bread and will help it to rise properly. A simple way to score is to do two vertical lines and two horizontal lines like a tic tac toe game. I carefully place the parchment paper and dough into the dutch oven, replace the top and put it in the oven. Using the dutch oven traps the steam which helps develop the crust on the bread. After 20 minutes I pull the dutch oven out, pull the bread (again very carefully, it will be super hot!) and put the bread back in the oven to cook for another 20ish minutes to create a nice golden brown crust. Allow the dutch oven to reheat and repeat the same baking process with the second dough.

Try to allow the bread to cool before cutting into though I know that can be very hard. I love to eat the bread plain, or with butter or dipped into some seasoned olive oil. It pairs really well with hummus like this Sweet Potato Caramelized Onion Hummus or slice and use the bread to make sandwiches.

Now as I said I know I still have a lot to learn but hopefully this information can be helpful to anyone who is starting out or thinking of making sourdough. It’s very scientific and I am not good at precision in recipes but I am hoping to continue to improve and learn and will share what I find. If you have any tips or tricks please feel free to share with me. You can send me a message or comment below.