Hi, my hungry friends. I made my first homemade sourdough bread from scratch. It took some long days and hours (spent mostly waiting), but the result, a lovely bread with a crispy crust and plenty of small air pockets on the inside, just made me forget all the rest. It was really a big accomplishment.
Can you believe, a simple water-flour combination can turn into a delicious bread? Fantastic! Sourdough bread requires mixing, stretching, folding, shaping, proofing and baking over a course of a day or two. However, don’t get scared, most of it is a passive waiting time.
Why is it called sourdough bread? The answer is simple. The dough is sour. Also, you don’t use a store-bought yeast, but you use wild yeast instead. That being said, wild yeast doesn’t make the dough sour. It’s the two kinds of bacteria, which help the sugar fermentation and as a result, we have this sour flavour.
Once you made homemade sourdough bread, it is difficult to go back to anything else. In fact, besides for bread, I use the starter also to make Flammkuchen, cookies and pancakes. In addition, if you fancy some other bread, you can check out this fantastic Naan bread or almost sweet pumpkin bread.
What is a sourdough starter?
A naturally leavened bread starts with making a starter. But what is a starter? Sourdough starter is basically a fermentation of flour and water combination. That’s it. Easy, isn’t it? Since every flour contains wild yeast, all you need to do is to activate it.
To get a strong starter it takes up to 7-10 days, during which you’ll notice some fermentation activity, some days maybe nothing at all, you’ll see bubbles appearing and you’ll see it rise and fall. The starter will breathe and it will be hungry. Therefore, you’ll need to feed it and take care of it. Wink. Anyway, let’s check out how to make the sourdough starter.
Now, probably, it looks a lot of writing or reading, but I can assure you it’s really simple. In fact, you just need to read it through, don’t overthink it and you’ll be doing everything automatically. When you succeed (and there is no doubt about that) the starter will be living with you. You can actually give it a name if you like. I call it Blobby.
Before you jump to the starter schedule, I have a couple of quick tips for you: First, weight the glass before you start and write it down. It will come handy when feeding the starter. Second, always use an electronic scale (it’s more accurate) and weight the ingredients. Third, try to feed the starter always at the same time (plus-minus 30 min). I scheduled for the morning, for instance.
How to make a starter?
Prepare the scale, a 500 ml large glass (the starter needs space to grow and expand) and a spatula (with a spatula it’s easier to scrape the starter of the sides). Besides that, you will only need two important ingredients, flour and water.
Ingredients for the sourdough starter:
- 80 g water (room temperature)
- 80 g flour (I used 2/3 wheat and 1/3 spelt, but you can use any kind you like)
Day 1
(morning) Add the flour and the water to a clean jar and mix until well combined. In other words, no dry flour and clumps should be visible. Then, using a spatula, scrape the sides of the glass and place a lid loosely on top. Place the glass in a draft-free corner (I placed mine in a cupboard, which I don’t open 10 times a day).
Day 2
(morning) Check on the starter. I didn’t see any activity and any bubbles at all. However, you might see them. In either way, it’s completely normal. Remove the lid and give a good stir to the starter in the glass. Scrape down the sides and again, loosely cover with the lid. Place the jar in the same place until the next morning.
Day 3
(morning) Today, you might see some bubbles. Also, today, you will start to feed the starter. In fact, you’ll do it two times a day. In the morning you will feed it and in the evening (with 12 hours in between) you’ll maintain it.
Take your scale, place the jar with the starter on it and remove all but 40 g of it. To make it easier for you; on your scale should be the weight of your glass (which you wrote down at the beginning) plus the 40 grams. You can discard the rest of the starter. Furthermore, add 80 g flour and 80 g water to the 40 g starter and stir until well combined. As always, scrape down the sides, cover loosely with the lid and place in the cupboard.
(evening) Since you only need to maintain it, add 30 g flour and 30 g water to the jar and stir to combine. Cover with the lid and put it back in the cupboard.
Day 4 – Day 6
Probably, you’ll see a lot of activity. This means you are doing it right. Simply repeat the steps from day 3 (morning and evening). Maybe you can also change to a new, clean glass.
Day 7
(morning) Finally, today you can check how strong your starter is. Before doing that, you need to feed the starter. As usual, discard everything but 40 g and add 80 g flour and 80 g water, stir and cover. After it doubles in size (approximately 5 hours) take half of a teaspoon of it and drop it in a glass with water. When it floats it means it’s ready and strong enough to bake.
Don’t panic if the starter sinks. Simply continue with the normal schedule with feeding and maintaining for two more days and then do the test again.
Your starter is ready and you are ready to bake! I told you, anyone can make a sourdough starter at home from scratch. Uh, maybe you’ll notice a sour smell. Well, that’s a good sign. A healthy starter smells sour yet fresh. Mine smells like beer, which is quite good. Wink.
How to maintain a sourdough starter?
If you are planning to bake every day or three times a week, keep feeding it the usual way but only once a day. When you are going to bake once or less per week, after feeding it, keep it at room temperature for a couple of hours, then close the lid tightly and place it in the fridge. In order to maintain your starter strong, you’ll need to feed it once a week.
Moreover, when it’s feeding time, take the jar out of the fridge a couple of hours earlier, followed by the feeding as usual, then leave it at room temperature for a couple of hours with the lid loosely on it and at the end close the lid completely and put the jar back into the fridge.
You can maintain your starter for years. My Blobby is a couple of months old. Wink. However, when you want to bake, feed your starter the day before and this time keep the part that you usually discard and use it for baking. Why do you need to do it a whole day ahead?
Making sourdough bread means a lot of waiting time
As already said, wild yeast needs its time to do a great job. After creating the starter, you start with the dough process. Shortly explained, a lot of passive waiting time is involved in bread making. In other words, sourdough needs to rest a lot in order to get that wonderful result at the end.
Basically, the whole fist day consists of waiting, folding and stretching and more waiting. A the end of the first day you need to give it a shape and put it in the fridge to proof until the next morning. Then, you can finally bake.
I’ve read quite a lot of recipes, blog posts, I followed an account on Instagram “full proof baking” and watched videos on how to make sourdough bread. As a result, I found a perfect formula for it. For X g flour, I use 72% water and 25% starter. For instance, if you use 300 g flour, you’ll need 216 g of water (that’s 72% of 300) and 75 g of starter (that’s 25% of 300). Yeah, you’ll have to do a little math. Wink.
Ingredients for a loaf of homemade sourdough bread:
- 200 g flour
- 144 g water (room temperature)
- 50 g starter
- 5 g salt
In a medium bowl mix the starter (this is the part you discarded when feeding it) and water. Simply mix with your hand. No kitchen tools are needed at all. Once the starter starts to dissolve, add the flour and mix to combine. Continue mixing with your hand until all the water is absorbed and no dry flour is visible. At this point stop. Don’t overmix the dough.
It is going to be sticky, but that’s how it should be. However, after the first stretch and fold (which follows a bit later) it will get smooth and it won’t stick anymore. Now, cover the bowl with some cling film and leave it to rest in a draft-free place for 30 minutes. After its rest, it is time to add the salt. Season and again mix it with your hand (this time slightly wet your hand) until well incorporated.
Stretch and fold
At this point, cover it again and leave to rest for another 30 minutes. After this step, it is time for the stretch and fold. As you can see, there is no kneading involved and you can keep the dough the whole time in the bowl. I love it! Before starting, remember to wet your hand.
Furthermore, grab some of the dough, stretch it up and fold it over the top of the rest of the dough. Keep doing the same move by turning the bowl until you do the 360° round. Cover and leave to rest. This was quick, wasn’t it? One minute of work!
Do the same thing every 30 minutes for the next 2 hours. After that, stretch and fold every hour for the following 2 hours. As for the last step, leave it to rest the whole 2 hours. That’s amazing! Only 6 minutes of effective stretch and fold. As a result, just enough gluten will develop and give the bread a wonderful structure.
Shaping
Finally, it is time for shaping. Basically, you need to give your bread-to-be a shape. Therefore, take the dough to your working area, which you sprinkled with a really small amount of flour. The dough should be smooth and stretchy.
There is no secret how to shape the sourdough bread. Grab the dough from the bottom side and fold it over the top. Do the same thing from the top side. Then, turn the short side facing you and roll it up. At the end seal the edges on the left and right and flip the shaped dough into a well-floured bread basket or simply a bowl.
Proofing
Cover it with a cling film and put in the fridge (12-16 hours) to proof overnight. In the morning of the following day, you are ready to bake. Moreover, you can either use a dutch oven pan or improvise as I did. The fact is, homemade sourdough bread is partly baked covered and partly uncovered. Therefore, if you don’t have a dutch oven pan, simply use a baking sheet as the base and a larger baking pan to cover it.
I addition, make sure to leave a gap, by slightly elevating the baking pan or by placing it over the edge. But why a gap? In order to create some steam, I added a bain-marie at the bottom of the oven (you might add some ice cubes as well). As a result, the steam will provide an ideal atmosphere for the crisp crust. Therefore, there is a gap.
Baking
One hour before baking, preheat the oven to 250º C or the maximum of your oven’s capability. Only 20 minutes before baking, take the dough out of the fridge, flip it directly on the baking paper and score it using a sharp knife or lame.
In conclusion, place a small baking pan with hot water at the bottom of the oven and the homemade sourdough bread on the baking sheet and cover it with the big baking pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Afterwards, remove the cover or lid, reduce the temperature to 220º C and bake for another 20-25 minutes.
Once the bread gets a lovely colour and it sounds hollow when you tap it at the bottom, the homemade sourdough bread is ready. Leave it to cool down on a rack and then dig in. I cut it in slices and made some lovely bruschette. I love fresh home-baked bread. There is nothing more satisfying than homemade sourdough bread.
Enjoy!
PS
If you like the recipe, if you make the recipe or if you have any new ideas how to improve or change it, let me know in the comments section below or alternatively share your photos and reactions with me on Instagram (@Passionspoon), Facebook or Twitter (@PassionSpoon1). Simply use the hashtag #passionspoonrecipes in your posts. I would love to see them! (wink)
