Sourdough—Updated!

Friday, 27 September 2024 at 12:18 pm.

Compared to the previous recipe I posted (https://joeinn.es/blog/sourdough), this is a long and complicated recipe on first glance, but that’s because I’ve written a lot of information down.

Almost all of it is actually very simple once you get the hang of it. It’s worth reading this through before baking (rather than trying to go step by step as you bake), and watching a couple of videos on YouTube for various techniques. I suggest checking out the following clips:

The whole video that this is based on is here and I recommend watching the whole thing, but it goes quite quickly! Don’t worry too much if your dough doesn’t look or behave exactly like the dough (or breads) you see in the videos. There’s a lot of room for things to go very differently depending on how strong your starter culture is, the temperature in your kitchen, the gluten content of your flour, and so on, but the below recipe will give you a decent tasting loaf while you experiment to find out what works best for you.

Ingredients

  • 150 g wholemeal flour
  • 25 g sourdough starter
  • 375 g water
  • 450 g bread flour
  • 12 g salt

Method

Start two mornings before you want to bake. Plan carefully because you’ll need to spend 5 minutes on it in 12 hours, and then a few hours after 24 hours. Normally I start at around 07:00. The timings are relatively forgiving and an extra hour or two at each stage won’t ruin your loaf.

  1. Feed your starter with 50 g wholemeal flour and 50 g water (to approximately 50 g starter, although this number is flexible). Wait around 12 hours until the starter has just about peaked (doubled)1.
  2. Take 25 g of the active starter and mix with 100g wholemeal flour and 100g water. Wait another 12 hours or so.
  3. By now, you’re 24 hours after you started. The prefermented mixture is known as a levain (or leven). Mix all of your levain with the bread flour, salt, and an additional 275g of water. Make sure it’s all well combined, and knead for a bit (you’re not really trying to build gluten strength yet, so you don’t need to knead it too hard. Having a very wet hand helps if the dough is sticky.
  4. Wait 30 minutes for the water to properly soak the flour. The gluten strength is already starting to build in this step. After 30 minutes, begin folding the dough to create gluten strength. Basically, you’re grabbing a portion of the edge of the dough, pulling it up and stretching, then folding it down to the other side of the dough. You should be able to do this about 6-8 times (start folding from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock, then 2 to 8, then 4 to 10, then offset and do 7 to 1, 9 to 3, 11 to 5)2. Once the dough starts pulling back and feels like it’s going to tear, you’ve done enough, otherwise keep going.
  5. Repeat the stretch and folds after half an hour. I like to do one more set after another half an hour, especially if the kitchen is cold. If the dough is already visibly rising, don’t do any more because you’ll start squeezing air out.
  6. Two hours after the final stretch and fold (note: this is variable, and depends on how many stretch and folds you do, and how warm the kitchen is) the dough should be ready for shaping. You can test this by poking the dough gently with a fingertip. If the indent reinflates but not all the way, then the dough is ready. If the dough does not reinflate, either you’ve overproved it or it’s not ready yet. If your kitchen is cold, give it another 30 minutes. Otherwise just move on to the shaping and hope for the best. It will still taste good, just might not rise as much in the oven.
  7. Shape the sourdough. There are lots of strategies for this. I use a dough scraper and try to push the dough underneath itself at about 4-5 o’clock, then bring the scraper round to around 11-12 o’clock underneath the dough.3
  8. Sprinkle some flour on the dough (rice flour is good for this if you have it, but normal/bread flour also works if you don’t have any). Slide your dough scraper underneath the dough and pick it all up, trying to keep the ball all together. Place into a prepared banneton4 with the seams facing up.
  9. Twist the seams on the dough together like you’re zipping it up. Pinch a small piece on the bottom seam and rotate your hand 90-180 degrees. This adds a bit of extra tension once it’s in the banneton. Not strictly necessary, but I like to do it anyway.
  10. Theoretically, this is ready for baking after about 30 minutes (skip to step 12), but I prefer to put the banneton and the dough in the fridge. You can decide whether you cover it or not. I tend not to bother, I don’t think it makes much difference.
  11. Wait 12-24 hours.
  12. Set your oven to around 210°C5, and wait for it to be fully up to temperature.
  13. Turn your banneton upside down and lift (and hope the bread separates from the banneton easily). Brush off any excess flour.
  14. Score your bread. You’re looking to cut a small (about 1/2 inch) deep incision from one end all the way to the other, digging into the bread at somewhere between 45 and 90 degrees. There are again lots of techniques, but I find a single, confident stroke is best all the way down.
  15. Liberally spray water on the bread. You’re trying to get the crust as evenly damp as possible.
  16. Bake for about 35-40 minutes. The crust should be a nice deep brown but not black, and it should sound hollow when you knock on the bottom of it. If you’re using a dutch oven, take the lid off after 20 minutes to make sure the crust browns nicely. If you can, find a way to get steam into your oven. Some people have good results with placing a baking tray with water in the bottom of the oven, others use ice cubes, others like to use soaked tea towels. Just be aware that the water will evaporate very quickly, and if you have hard water, you’ll have limescale deposits all over whatever container is holding the water.
  17. Wait at least an hour for the bread to cool before slicing.

Sample Timeline

Here’s a sample timeline for a warm kitchen

Day 0

07:00 - Feed starter 19:00 - Build levain

Day 1

07:00 - Mix dough 07:40 - Lift and fold 1 08:10 - Lift and fold 2 10:10 - Shape dough

Day 2

09:00 - Preheat oven 09:30 - Score bread and in the oven 10:05 - Bread out of the oven 12:00 - Lunch is served

And for a colder one:

Day 0

07:00 - Feed starter 19:00 - Build levain

Day 1

07:00 - Mix dough 07:40 - Lift and fold 1 08:10 - Lift and fold 2 08:40 - Lift and fold 3 11:00 - Shape dough

Day 2

09:00 - Preheat oven 09:30 - Score bread and in the oven 10:05 - Bread out of the oven 12:00 - Lunch is served

Footnotes

  1. What to do with the excess starter? You can just dump it. I use the ‘scrapings’ method, which means leaving 20-50g of starter in the jar and sticking it in the fridge until I want to use it again. ↩

  2. The goal here is to create a criss cross pattern of invisible gluten strands to trap air in the bread. When you stretch the dough, you’re aligning the gluten strands with the direction of the stretch, and when you fold it back, all those strands will run parallel. By layering multiple of these folds, you end up with layers of gluten strands which are not all parallel, so the air can’t bubble its way through easily. ↩

  3. You’re trying to create surface tension in the dough. The goal is for the dough to take on a smooth surface so it looks like a tight ball with all the rough edges tucked neatly underneath. Use only a very small amounth of flour at this stage, the dough may well be sticky, but if you keep at it, it will probably come together with a shiny, smooth surface. If you tear the surface of the dough, stop working on it, and leave it to rest ten minutes. ↩

  4. Your banneton will develop a floury layer in it with usage. If it’s your first time using your banneton, you should be sure to sprinkle plenty of flour in the banneton so the dough doesn’t stick. If it sticks, then you’ll tear it. Better to have clumps of flour you can brush off before baking than dough sticking to the banneton. Some people use the banneton with the insert, some without. It’s easier with the insert especially to begin with. Don’t be tempted to wash the insert until/unless you can see mould forming. If you keep it in a cool dry place though, it should be fine. ↩

  5. The perfect temperature here depends on quite a lot of factors, including your oven, whether you use a fan, whether you use a dutch oven/baking stone, and how much steam you can get in to the oven. Your goal is to get the core of the bread up to temperature as quickly as possible, while ensuring the crust doesn’t get too hot. There are lots of methods, and experimentation is really the only thing you can do here. 180°C is too cold for the core of the bread to be hot enough to be rising vigorously before the crust dries out, hotter than 230°C will fully bake the crust into a hard shell before the inside has chance to catch up. If your bread has big air bubbles at the top after baking, the oven was too hot. If your bread does not rise enough, the oven was too cold. A pre-heated baking stone can help to heat the bread more evenly, so you can start off closer to 230°C. Similarly with a pre-heated dutch oven, more moisture will be trapped and keep the crust moist for longer, as well as protecting the crust from direct heat. ↩