Basic Sourdough Recipe using your discarded starter.

Recipe

This recipe follows an 80% hydration bread recipe. It can be difficult to handle, but after a few tries and experiments with flour compositions, you'll get the hang of it. I'll only list ingredients in weight as baking is really more of a science than art, so please ensure you get a food scale before venturing into the world of bread baking.

The ingredients are super simple (as long as you have a sourdough starter, which is another beast all in its own. We can talk about in a subsequent post):

• 1000 grams of any* combination of wheat flour
• 800 grams water (80%)
• 150 grams fed sourdough starter (15%)
• 20 grams of salt (2%)
• Whatever remaining discard from your sourdough starter (100-200 grams)

*If all you have is all-purpose flour, you may find that this recipe is excruciatingly wet and unwieldy. This is due to the low gluten content in all-purpose flour, which doesn't absorb a lot of the water. You can still bake with it, just note that it'll not hold its form very well in your proofing vessel, and subsequently when you throw it into the oven to bake. If you have the ingredient called "vital wheat gluten", a couple of tablespoons can help bolster your all-purpose flour.

Recommended Equipment

Prepping the Dough

• Food Scale (I say required)
• Mixing Bowl
• Banneton/Bowl for proofing
• Brown rice flour/AP flour 50/50 mix to prevent sticking to the banneton/bowl
• Plastic/steel dough scraper
• Kitchen/tea towel

Baking the Bread

• Baking Stone
• Dutch Oven at least 5 quarts
• Sheet Pan
• Parchment Paper + Cornmeal
• Sharp knife/lame
• Wire rack
• Oven mitts

Instructions

Note that bread baking has dependencies on several variables including ingredients, kitchen temperature/humidity, oven temperature, etc. Not everything will go to plan the first time you bake this bread, but if you keep practicing, you should be able to figure out what works best for your variables.

Estimated Time: 30 hrs (with overnight refrigerator rise)

Servings: Two 2 pound loaves

Step 1. Feeding the sourdough starter

Ingredients needed: Sourdough starter, flour, water.

Equipment needed: Extra container to hold your sourdough discard.

These instructions assume you know how to feed a sourdough starter and that you've stored it in the refrigerator.

1. Take out starter from the refrigerator and scoop out your discard into a container. Loosely cover.
2. Place the container back in the refrigerator to use later in the recipe.
3. After about 1 hour for the starter to come to room temperature, feed your starter so that you have at least 150 grams that you can remove (e.g., 75 grams flour + 75 grams water).
4. You'll wait until the starter doubles (which mean it's ready to use).

Step 2. Autolysing the initial dough

Ingredients needed: Flour, water.

Equipment needed: Mixing bowl.

Since it takes 6-8 hours to double the starter, you can start autolysing the initial dough. Autolysing means "digesting" the dough, which helps forms gluten. It is a simple mixture of the water and flour ingredients.

1. Add 1000 grams of flour to mixing bowl.
   If there are multiple types of flours (or vital wheat gluten), stir them together.
2. Pour in 800 grams of water.
3. Mix together.
   Use your hands, dough whisk, or silicone spatula and keep mixing until all the flour is incorporated into a rough dough.
4. Loosely cover the mixing bowl and set aside until the starter is ready.
   It can sit for up to 24 hours.

Step 3. Mixing in the rest of the ingredients when the starter is ready

Ingredients needed: Sourdough starter, salt, sourdough discard.

Equipment needed: Mixing bowl.

About one hour prior to your sourdough starter become ready (guesstimate), take out your discard from Step 1 so that it can come to room temperature. Then, get your bowl of autolysed dough ready for mixing in the rest of the ingredients.

1. Add the 150 grams of sourdough starter.
2. Add 20 grams of salt.
3. Add discarded sourdough starter.
4. Using your hands, start to mix everything together using the "pull-and-fold" method as described below (If you're familiar with regular bread making, it is quite different than "kneading" dough):
1. You'll start from the opposite end of the bowl, using all fingers to grab that end of the dough.
2. Pull the dough up as much as you can without breaking, and fold it towards your side of the bowl.
3. Release the dough, and then press down on the top where you just folded over into the bottom (this isn't a forceful press, just firm).
4. Rotate the bowl a quarter-turn, and repeat the pull-and-fold technique.
5. You do this as much as you can to try and shape a loose ball. If the dough is too wet, it won't really form a ball, so about 5-10 minutes of this is OK.
   
5. Let the dough rest loosely covered for 30 minutes.
6. Repeat the pull-and-fold method, and then wait 30 minutes.
7. Repeat (4) three more times, for a total of 2 hours.
   
   
8. Cover, and continue to bulk rise.
   I do this overnight in the refrigerator for convenience. If you do it at room temperature, it could be about 4-6 hours. You're looking for the dough to rise into a domed shape.

Step 4. Shaping the dough

Ingredients needed: Your dough, flour for dusting.

Equipment needed: Banneton/bowl, towel, dough scraper.

This step assumes you bulk rose the dough overnight in the refrigerator.

1. Let dough come to room temperature as much as you can.
   It's a lot of dough, so I try at least 2 hours.
2. Halfway through the dough coming to room temperature, do the pull-and-fold method four times (i.e., four quarter-turns) to shape into a rough ball.
3. Flour your working surface and use your dough scraper to turn the dough onto the table.
4. Split the dough in two using your dough scraper.
5. Flour your hands and loosely shape each portion into a rough ball.
6. Cover the dough balls with a towel and let rest for 30 minutes.
7. Flour the top of each dough ball.
   In the next steps, you'll need to be a bit quick and ready to get the ball into your proofing vessel (banneton/bowl)
8. Generously flour your banneton, or bowl that's lined with a towel.
9. Shaping the dough. Be confident in all your actions and move quickly. It can be a sticky dough, and sticky dough will break your confidence if you hesitate.
1. Flour your hands and quickly flip over the dough ball.
2. Pat down the dough ball lightly into a rectangular shape.
3. For the end closest to you, fold over a portion on each side into the middle and lightly pat in.
4. Fold and roll this over a third of the way to the top.
5. Fold again and roll over until you reach the top.
6. At this point, you should have a ball with the seam side down.
7. Using your dough scraper in one hand, and cupping the dough ball with your other hand, spin and tuck the bottom of the dough towards the seam. This helps make the ball more taut on the surface.
   
10. Using the dough scraper on the bottom of the dough ball, quickly flip the ball into your proofing vessel, so the seam side is up. Dust the seam side with flour, and around the edges of the ball so it doesn't stick.
11. Repeat Steps 9 and 10 for the second dough ball.

At this point, you will let the dough proof, which can be a tricky thing to measure. At room temperature, this can be 3-4 hours. Or, you can let proof overnight in the refrigerator.

Since I only have one dutch oven, I can only bake one loaf of bread at a time, so I proof one loaf at room temperature, and the other goes in the fridge after shaping. About an hour before proofing is done on the first loaf (guesstimate), I take out the refrigerated ball to come to room temperature. My theory is that in the next hour of baking, the refrigerated dough will be proofed enough to bake quickly after, but you'll have to try this out for yourself.

Step 5. Baking bread

Ingredients needed: Your dough, cornmeal.

Equipment needed: Dutch oven, parchment paper, oven mitts, sharp knife/lame, wire rack.

You'll have to make sure your dough is proofed before baking. If it's under-proofed, your dough will come out flat, as not enough gases were created to raise your dough. If it's over-proofed, the gases may have leaked out/collapsed, also leading to a flat dough. Regardless, don't fret. The bread will still bake and still be edible. It'll just take some practice

The poke test is what I've learned to help gauge whether or not the dough is ready, and based on my instructions, it can happen in as little as 1 hour of proofing. For the poke test, you quickly push in the dough with the pad of your index finger. If the dough comes back immediately, it's under-proofed. If there's a little bit of a gap and it slowly raises back up (but not necessarily all the way), then it's ready to go. Honestly, I never know what happens if it's over-proofed.

1. Ensure you have a rack in the middle of the oven.
2. Place your dutch oven (with cover) on the middle rack.
3. (optional) Place a rack on the bottom of the oven. More on this later.
4. Preheat oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
   I recommend getting a thermometer for inside the oven, since not all ovens accurately report the internal temperature.
5. Cut some parchment paper to fit your proofing vessel. Dust the parchment paper with cornmeal
6. When the oven reaches temperature, flip over the dough out of the proofing vessel onto the parchment paper.
7. Brush off any excess flour and then slash the dough with a sharp knife, scissors, or lame.
8. Carefully take out the dutch oven, take off the cover, and drop the dough with parchment paper into the dutch oven. Replace cover.
9. Place dutch oven into oven.
10. Take your baking sheet and place in the bottom rack.
    This helps prevent burning on the bottom of the bread, along with the parchment paper and cornmeal.
11. Bake for 45 minutes covered. And then take off cover and watch for around 5 minutes.
    You're looking for a nicely golden crust. If you have a probe thermometer, you can test for 200-210 degrees Fahrenheit of internal temperature. Otherwise, golden crust should be OK.
12. Carefully take dutch oven out of the oven, remove lid, and flip bread over onto a wire rack for cooling.

And there you have it. You'll have to let it cool for about an hour or longer, or else slicing through it might be a gummy mess.

The Long Story

About eight years ago, I attempted to make a sourdough starter which ended up in complete failure. I was still in my very early days of bread baking, and thought that sourdough would be an easy transition from all the dry yeast breads I made using a bread machine.

This was my attempt. Try not to cry.

Did I eat it? Yes. Was it good? No. It was terrible.

It's been a long journey since then. I never attempted to bake another sourdough until COVID-19 happened and we were in quarantine. With a little bit of time on my hands, I pursued creating my own starter again. The first attempt was pretty surprising.

It felt a bit off, and was definitely denser than I would have liked. After reading/watching some more tutorials, I kept on practicing.

It's definitely a lot of work, but if you're passionate about it, just keep on trying. It's a lot of bread to eat, but once you're ready, you can share with all of your friends and family.