Sourdough Bread

I have tried lots of different sourdough recipes and through lots of tweaking, I have made my perfect recipe! I wanted to make this recipe as simple as possible but explain things well. Sourdough can be daunting but the more you practice the better you get. My first loaf was so horribly ugly and once I understood how it worked and practiced more, it became my favorite thing to do.

Ingredients:

250-300 grams of active, bubbly sourdough starter

725 grams of filtered water

20 grams of salt (I prefer Redmond pink salt)

1000 grams of unbleached all-purpose flour

Directions:

-Once your starter is at its peak, add it to a large bowl.

-Add your water and salt and stir until the water becomes cloudy, the starter doesn’t have to be all the way dissolved.

-Add your flour and mix well, you may have to use your hands to mix all the way but make sure there aren’t any large pockets of flour hiding in your dough.

-For the next few hours, you are going to do stretch and folds every 30 minutes until the dough becomes more smooth and you notice a change in texture and how it’s holding its shape. Stretch and folds are a simple technique done by pulling and stretching the sides of your dough and folding them over the other side of the dough. When your dough is resting for the 30 minutes between, make sure to cover your bowl with a towel.

-Once the stretch and folds are done, you are going to let your dough rise with a towel over it until it is 50-100% bigger. To speed this process up, I put it in my oven with the oven turned off and the oven light turned on.

-After it has risen, cut it into two loaves.

-Once you’ve cut it, you will laminate the dough. Laminating is a process of stretching the dough into a square (this is also when you’d add anything to your dough like chocolate chips, raisins, etc).

-Once it is laminated, fold it three times over itself and then roll what’s left over itself into a loaf shape.

-Now you are going to add tension to the dough by pushing it away from you and then pulling it towards you a few times.

-Let the dough rest on the counter for 15-20 minutes.

-Now you are going to follow the same technique and add tension to the dough again but this time you are going to flip it over into proofing baskets when you are done.

-Once your dough is in the baskets, cover with plastic wrap or a disposable shower cap and leave in the fridge overnight.

-In the morning you are going to preheat your over to 450 degrees, while preheating place your dutch oven into your oven and set a timer for 30 minutes.

-While the oven is preheating, lay a sheet of parchment paper on the counter and flip your dough onto it.

-Next you will be scoring your dough with a razor blade, this is a fun part to get creative. Don’t cut too deep into your loaf but you want good cuts to help air escape. I love to add a big cut on the side and some flowers or anything you’d like!

-Once your 30 minutes is up, place your dough in your dutch over (still on the parchment paper) and cover with the lid before placing back in the oven.

-Cook with lid on for 35-40 minutes and take the lid off and cook for another 5-10 minutes.

-Let it cool and enjoy!

Storing your bread:

You want to store your bread cut side down on a wooden cutting board, this lets the outside stay crusty and the inside stays soft.