everyday sourdough bread
I almost always have a loaf of sourdough bread in some state of proofing around the house. I know sourdough got super trendy during COVID, but I started playing around with sourdough about 20 years ago in graduate school for archaeology. I was never successful in capturing the wild yeast and making my own starter from scratch, so I retreated and made a ton of no-knead bread for years and years. I got used to the long fermentation, building gluten bonds, and high-hydration dough. When I decided to try sourdough baking again, I started the most sane way: I asked if anyone in my local Buy Nothing group had starter to share. Sure enough.
For a long time, I baked sourdough bread much like I baked no-knead bread with little measuring and just going by the feel of the dough and unsurprisingly, I got inconsistent results. Fortunately, there are thousands of YouTube videos and online groups dedicated to sourdough baking so I’m in my groove.
In some sourdough circles, it’s blasphemous to say this, but I’m not super picky about measurements and timing. Yes, I have guidelines, but we don’t live in lab-controlled settings so ambient temperature and humidity change. And even if you consistently buy the same flour, you can get variation in hydration right out of the bag based on the environment of storage. While I “know” my starter well by now, yeast is a living organism and it reacts differently sometimes if I’ve left it in the fridge to chill for a few weeks if I’m on a break from baking.
While I measure, I still rely on that experience from decades of working slack, high-hydration dough. Sometimes I need to add more water because it’s dry. Sometimes I cut proofing duration because it’s warm and humid in the house.
I don’t say any of this to frighten anyone; I say it to empower you to try and remember that perfection is the enemy of REALLY good bread.
Everyday Sourdough Bread
Ingredients
- 100 g starter - ripe
- 300 g water
- 10 g kosher salt
- 450 g flour
- Extra flour as needed
Instructions
- Mix starter, water and salt in a large bowl, add in flour (feed starter container with 50 g flour and 50 g water to replenish) until cohesive blob of dough forms
- Cover bowl with a damp towel and rest 30 minutes
- Stretch and pull 4 corners for the first time, can be somewhat aggressive
- Cover and rest 30 minutes
- Stretch and pull 4 corners for the second time, but more gently
- Cover and rest 30 minutes
- Stretch and pull 4 corners for the third time, but more gently
- Cover and rest 30 minutes
- Stretch and pull 4 corners for the fourth time, very gently. Turn out of bowl to counter and form a tight ball with seam side down
- Place in bowl, smooth side up. Cover and let it rise about 3.5 hours or until doubled
- Preshape: gently take flour out of bowl with smooth side up and sticky side down and gently nudge into a ball on the counter
- Do not cover and rest 30 minutes
- Flour banneton basket (you can put the dough directly in the basket or put a flour sack towel in the basket and flour that), form loaf carefully by sprinkling top of ball with flour, flip over and fold until you get the shape you want, pressing down seams as you go to achieve the shape you want. Gently stretch any dough over ends if making an oval shape.
- Flip over and put it in the banneton basket
- Sprinkle with flour, cover and leave it on the counter for an hour before fridge (I skip this step if it’s really warm in the house)
- Put uncovered dough in the fridge for 8-24 hours
- Place a Dutch oven on the middle rack of your oven and place a baking pan on a rack below it to prevent the bottom of the loaf from burning
- Preheat oven to 500°F for at least 30 minutes
- Gently remove dough from the basket and flip onto a piece of parchment
- Dust off excess flour, score top with bread lame
- Drop to 450°, put bread and parchment in oven, covered 20 minutes
- Uncover and bake 20-30 additional minutes
- Cool on wire rack at least an hour before cutting - this is super important as the bread will continue to bake even out of the oven. Your crumb will turn gummy if you cut into it too quickly!
Notes
My approximate timeline:
- 6:30am - feed starter
- 2:00pm - make dough
- 2:30pm - first stretch and folds
- 3:00pm - second stretch and folds
- 3:30pm - third stretch and folds
- 4:00pm - fourth stretch and folds and start long counter ferment
- 7:30pm - let dough rest on counter 30 minutes
- 8:00pm - form loaf and place in banneton basket and let rest
- 9:00pm - put dough in the refrigerator (if I do this step)
- Ready to bake the next day!
