sourdough bread lesson

For all those who have some of my sourdough starter, I am now giving directions for you to make bread the way that I've learned to.

I should mention that you should avoid using metal utensils or bowls with sourdough.

I'll list the ingredients here:

2.2 lbs water (including one cup or more of sourdough starter the consistency of muffin dough)

2.8lbs of flour (half whole wheat, half bread flour, I use more like 2.4 lbs if I am making it all with white flour)

4 teaspoons of salt

This makes 3 loaves.

1) Having fed your starter the morning of your mixing the dough (the day before you bake), a few spoons of water, and a few of flour every hour or so, with a good stir, and left it in a warm place.

Dump about a cup of starter, into a bowl that you have placed on your digital scale and tared out to zero. Simeon had turned mine off, and thus all of the numbers shown in the photos are wrong. It should say about half a pound. Then add water until you reach 2.2lbs

Here I show a jar with just the drippings left, I put this back in the fridge as it has just been fed. Sorry for the chicken defrosting in the background, it looks too close for comfort. I would have moved it, but didn't want to defile my hands.

After having just added water, tare out your scale again (be sure to add your spoon before you tare it) and begin adding flour. I use about half whole wheat and half white bread flour. I added 1.4lbs of white, and then added 1.4lbs of wheat. It was a tacky dough, though not sticky (coat your fingers), and quite heavy. You want to make sure that it forms into a ball and doesnt just lay flat. If it is sticky or flat you need to add more flour, hand fulls at a time, if it forms a ball and is just tacky before you've added all the flour, stop adding flour! You will have to knead it to mix the flour in. But you can stop once it's added, the gluten gets organized in it's stay in the fridge, you don't need to knead this like regular bread.

Cover with plastic wrap and put in a warm place for one hour (my oven has no light in it, so the top of the stove where the pilot lights are works well). After that point you will add 4 teaspoons of salt and mix it in well (this will count as one of the four times as described below). The delay in adding salt allows the wild yeast to grow unhindered.

Once ever hour, for the next four hours you will need to fold the bread four times (just over on it self, like folding a wash cloth into eights). I use chop sticks so I dont have to get my hands dirty.

This is what mine looked like at the end of the four hour period. Now you put it in the fridge over night.

This is what it looked like in the AM, yours should have lots of bubbles that you can see on the side. Let it warm up for two to three hours, there is no need to hurry it, just keep it at room temperature.