Bless your family and community with the texture and flavor of traditional sourdough!
Ingredients
950g Organic Flour
580g Water
200g Active Sourdough Starter
20g Sea Salt
Instructions
- Ensure your sourdough starter is active, bubbly and roughly double in size. Personally, I make sure my starter is fed the night before so I can start the dough in the morning.
- Add flour, water, starter, and sea salt to a bread bowl or a proofing bin and thoroughly combine the ingredients. You can use a dough whisk...however, I like to use my hands. Yes, its sticky, its messy, but everything gets combined well and this gives you the opportunity to start working the dough to build gluten. You will be left with a dough that is sticky, but not lumpy.
- Let your dough rest for an hour. This is going to help the gluten build before the stretching and folding takes place.
- Start your stretches and folds. Scoop your fingers under the dough at front of the bowl, stretch upwards, fold over, turn the bowl to 15 past 12:00, and repeat 4x. Cover your dough and repeat again in 20 minutes. Repeat this process 4x before starting bulk fermentation.
- It's time for bulk fermentation. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, or apply the lid if you are using a proofing bin. Now, lets talk about timing. This is going to vary with the temperature. Average, roughly 75 degrees F, you're looking at about 5 hours. If your house runs a bit chilly, around 70 degrees F, 6-8 hours. The best piece of advice I can give here is to do this a few times and watch the dough. Your are watching for around a 50% increase in volume, a slightly domed top, small to medium gas bubbles across the top and a long the sides if you are using a clear container, and a clean release from the sides. The temperature of your kitchen and strength and hydration of your starter are going to influence the timing of the bulk fermentation process.
- Once the bulk fermentation process is complete, turn the dough out to a floured surface and split into 2 equal parts. Take the edges of the dough and pull them in towards the center, almost like you are folding a cloth diaper lol, and pinch them together. Flip over so the seem side is down, and shape the dough by tucking your hands at the top of the dough, pull the dough towards you, turn, and repeat....there are a TON of tutorials on YouTube or TikTok, and a visual will likely make more sense rather than reading the method.
- Once your loaves are shaped, place them seem side up into a floured banneton or a bowl with a floured towel. Cover and place in the fridge overnight. This is your second bulk ferment.
- The next morning, or when it best suits your day, preheat your oven and cast iron dutch oven to 450 degrees F.
- Now its time to bake your bread. You are going to pull the sourdough from your fridge and turn it out onto a couple of sheets of parchment paper, making sure the side that was face down in your floured bowl or banneton is now face up. Lightly flour and score the loaves. I use two dutch ovens at once, if you only have one, repeat this process with the second loaf once the first one finishes baking.
- Place the dough with parchment inside the heated Dutch oven, toss in an ice cube, place the lid back on, and bake for 20 minutes. Once the 20 minutes is up, remove the lid, turn the temperature down to 400 degrees F, and bake another 20 minutes. Your bread should be a beautiful golden brown.
- Remove promptly and turn out to a cooling rack. Wait until the bread is thoroughly cooled before storing or cutting into....if you can wait that long lol....warm bread with irish butter is peak comfort!
Just a little note,
My Friend, the best piece of advice I can give with sourdough is to not overthink it. It's going to take a few times to get your bearings, but don't get discouraged. You will find as you go along that you'll develop your own method, maybe tweak the ratios in the dough, start in with additions etc. That's the beautiful thing with sourdough bread, its not a science as much as it is an art...and art is personal.
That's all I have for today my friend, as always, I hope you feel inspired to put the phone down and live well<3
-Amanda at Swede Alley Co