Sourdough
Before you start: don’t get put off by all the steps, it might be tricky to start but after 2-3 goes you’ll know it off by heart and won’t even need to read this again. Also, generally the timings are pretty flexible, the bread won’t be rubbish because you only left 30 mins between each fold or if it was in the fridge for 15 hours instead of 10. Once you get familiar with it, you’ll be spending about 20 mins “hands on” time doing this at most.
Things you’ll need
Cast iron pot
You can get away without this, but you’ll get better bread with on. Go cheap like this one from Argos.
Proofing basket
Get one of these from Amazon
Bread lame
For scoring your dough, a razor blade will do, or something like this one here.
Flour
For your starting and maintaining your starter you’ll need a rye or wholemeal flour, most will do as long as it’s bread flour. For making your bread you’ll need strong white bread flour, again, any will do as long as it’s bread flour.
A jar to keep your starter in
Kilner jars will do but the shoulder in the jar can get annoying, I use one of these from Weck - get it on amazon.
Spray bottle
To fill with water
Starting and maintaining a starter
The most important thing, you can keep this alive for years and it’ll make better bread the older and more active it is. Takes about a week to get it going so start in advance of when you want to bake, it also might not work first time but if you keep having trouble, ask a friend for a bit of their starter or buy some off the internet.
Ingredients
50g wholegrain rye or wholewheat flour
or
25g wholewheat + 25g white bread flour (this is what i use)
50g cold water
Method
Mix the flour and water together. Cover and leave at room temperature for 24 hours.
Repeat at the same time every day for 6 days. By day 6 it should be nice and lively with some bubbling and a slightly alcoholic aroma.
Following this, store in the fridge in an airtight container and use at least once a fortnight.
Before use, feed with 50g flour and 50g water (or whatever volumes your recipe requires in equal parts flour and water) and leave at room temperature for 8 hours. (note from me 3 years in: don't let the starter get massive or it won't be very active, i now chuck some away before i feed it so i have about 100-150g before i add in the water and flour)
If using tap water, leave it out of the fridge for a few hours before mixing into starter or dough to allow chlorine etc to evaporate, otherwise it can kill the bacteria in the starter.
Sourdough recipe and timelines
This is sort of following Bread Ahead’s sourdough recipe. This timeline is based on how i bake at home, if i’m going to bake the loaf on Saturday morning i’ll start the process on Thursday night so all in all, 1.5 days beforehand. There are a few steps but each one is short and overall you shouldn’t be taking much more than 20 mins to do everything.
Feed the starter
Note: you can’t feed the starter with water straight from the tap, so leave some out ahead of time.
Remove the starter from the fridge and add equal parts water and flour to your starter (for this recipe i add 50g of each). I do this about 11pm and leave it out overnight or for around 8-9 hours.
At this point, fill a jug with about 500ml of water and leave it out, you’ll use it the next day.
The next day the starter mixture will have grown and become bubbly.
Make a stiff starter
I do this about 7am the next morning. In a bowl mix the following together into a ball
90g strong white bread flour
45g water
45g starter that you fed the night before
Now cover the bowl in clingfilm and leave for 8-14 hours (should be in a warm room, don't leave it in the kitchen if it's freezing, but also don't stick it on the radiator)
8-14 hours later…
The stiff starter should have roughly doubled in size after 10 hours (about 5pm).
Mix the dough
Ingredients: 400g water, 145g stiff starter, 400g white flour, 100g wholemeal flour, 16g salt
Put 145g of stiff starter in a bowl with 400ml of water and break it up by hand.
In a large bowl measure out 400g of white bread flour and 100g of wholemeal flour then add the starter/water mixture. Mix well and ensure there are no bits of flour left unmixed, knead the dough for a few mins until it’s all incorporated and getting smoother (you can do this on a worktop but i do it in the bowl so i don’t have to clean up).
It should look like this…
Put a tea towel over the bowl and leave it about 20 mins.
Add the salt
After 20 mins add in 16g of salt and knead it in - takes about 2 mins and the dough will be much more smooth and stretchy. Cover again.
Leave for one hour
Folding the dough
Uncover and fold the dough (first fold) (pull one side of the dough up and stretch it over to the centre.
Do this from the bottom, the top and each of the two sides)
Leave for one hour
Uncover and fold the dough (second fold)
Leave for one hour
Uncover and fold the dough (third fold)
Leave for one hour
Shape the dough
Uncover the dough, dust your worktop and the inside of your proofing basket with flour. Tip the dough out onto the worktop and fold the outside edges of the dough into the middle, once you’ve done this and the edges of the dough are gathered in the middle, flip it over and shape it into a ball (this is tricky, but this video will help). If it sticks, just add more flour around it.
Proofing
Once shaped, flip it over and place it upside down (so the smooth side is at the bottom) into your floured proofing basket. Put the cover over the basket and place it in the fridge (for me this is usually at about 11pm) overnight.
Baking
The next morning, put your cast iron pot into the oven and heat it to 250, once it’s reached temperature leave it for another 20 mins.
Get your dough out of the fridge, flip it out onto a baking tray and remove the cast iron pot from the oven.
Carefully place the dough into the cast iron pot and using your lame, make a cut across the dough (no right or wrong way to do this, you can make one cut, two cuts, a pattern or you don’t even have to do it, it simply allows you to control where the bread expands as it bakes) then spray the dough 2-3 times with water, put the lid on and place it into the oven.
Bake for 25-30 mins
Note: oven performance varies, so you may need to adjust the timings to this or your preferences are you figure out how you like the bread.
After 30 mins or so…
Remove the lid and bake for another 15-20 mins (depending on how dark you want the loaf).
Finished!
Remove from the oven, put it on a rack to cool - best time to eat it is 2 hours later!