My Sourdough Method

Sourdough is, in my opinion, the very best type of bread, I’ve written about it before with hints and tips and small parts of my technique. This however is my full method, its taken me a bit of time to get here, quite a few failures along the way but I’m currently in the situation were I get consistent results. I’m no expert, my technique has evolved mainly from the approach Chad Robertson uses in his excellent book Tartine Bread, I’ve also got Andrew Whitley’s book Bread Matters that has been very helpful along the way.

As with all bread baked at home, the results you get in professional ovens are very hard to replicate, the intense top and bottom heating of bread ovens along with steam injection and unvented chambers can working wonders on oven spring, crust and ear formation. Generally, with a few tricks, you can get close, not perfect but not far off.

This dough is quite wet, so experience handling wet dough is useful. We are also going to used an upturned sauce pan to bake the bread in. This will be pre heated in the oven and placed over the dough when it is on the baking tray. The purpose of the pan is to trap steam given off by the dough, the added moisture in the air surrounding the loaf gelatinises the crust, meaning it can stretch further before setting. This allows for great rips and better crust formation, it will also allow the crust to get some shine on them. It won’t replicate the steam ovens of professional bakers, but it isn’t far off. Other people talk of putting pans of water in the oven, which do produce steam, but have little to no effect on the bread. Professional ovens are close chambers to when steam it produced from both the injectors and the dough, it is trapped in with the bread. Domestic ovens have vents that are permanently open thus any steam produced vents straight from the oven. Don’t bother with a pan of water in the bottom of your oven, it doesn’t work, as the steam just vents straight out.

I also do a long prove, overnight in the fridge, this greatly improves my results with crust formation and can make handling the dough, when transferring from basket to try a lot easier. I’m not sure of the exact science behind this, but the slight shine and blistering I get on my crusts is much improved by a slow long prove in the fridge.

Equipment

• Large Mixing bowl
• Water jug
• Scales
• scrapers
• baking tray
• Large sauce pan
• proving basket or bowl lined with floured tea towel
• Fridge
• Large Tupperware tub
• Sharp blade, preferably razor blade.

Ingredients for Starter 

• 200g Strong white flour
• 200g wholemeal flour
• 400g Water

Ingredients for leaven

• 1 tblspoon starter
• 150g strong white flour
• 150g water

Ingredients for Dough

• 500g Strong White Flour (about 12% protien)
• 150g Leven
• 350g water
• 10g Salt

For the starter

• Mix the two flours together.
• In a separate bowl mix 50g of your flour mix with 50g water.
• Cover the blow and leave for 24 hours
• Add 50g of flour mix and 50g water and mix thoroughly
• Cover the bowl and leave for 24 hours
• Add 50g of flour mix and 50g water and mix thoroughly
• Cover the bowl and leave for 24 hours
• Add 50g of flour mix and 50g water and mix thoroughly
• Cover the bowl and leave for 24 hours
• After four days your starter should be bubbly and smell quite strong and sharp.

The water does not need to be warm, straight from the tap is fine, also you don’t need to leave the starter in a warm place, room temperature is fine. For producing a leaven only a small amount of starter is needed, but it can be kept indefinitely in a jar with regular feeding, about once every 48 hours. If you keep feeding it, without much baking in between you’ll end up with far too much, don’t be afraid to through some away or even better give some to a friend. This starter is a ferment of natural yeasts that were contained with in the flour, it is the key to sourdough, at no point should you add commercial yeast (as recommended by some).

For the leaven

• In a bowl mix the flour, water and starter together.
• Do this two days before you need the loaf late at night.
• Cover the bowl and leave at room temperature over night.

This leaven by the morning should have a light fruity taste with a gentle tang, not as strong as you starter. Baking this loaf takes some foresight, if I want the bread on Saturday, I would mix the leaven on Thursday night, prepare the dough on Friday and bake the loaf on Saturday morning. The final leaven should be bubbly and show strong signs of yeast action.

For the Dough

• Put 330g of water in a large bowl (saving 20g for later), make sure the water is luke warm about 25 degrees.
• Add the leaven, and mix to make sure it is fully dispersed fully in the water
• Add the flour and mix thoroughly until forming a rough dough.
• At this point you don’t need to knead the dough, cover the bowl and let it stand for 25 minutes.
• After its rest, sprinkle on the salt and add the remaining 20g of water, mix well until salt is well dispersed throughout the dough.
• Knead the dough for 5 t0 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.
• Place in Tupperware tub with lid on, place in a warm spot (about 27 degrees) for 3-4 hours.

Protein in flour needs time to fully absorb water, and this is aided if there is no salt, as it can toughen the gluten. Thus we do an initial mix and let it stand, then mix in the salt, you should notice that the dough seems more cohesive after its initial rest, as if its self kneaded. This process is called Autolyse, a common practice and one that can really improve your home baking be it in sourdough or yeast loaf. It should significantly reduce the length of time for kneading and help with producing a softer crumb.

Sourdough, due to the weaker natural yeasts, takes longer to prove, it can take over four hours and can vary greatly. After 3 to 4 hours there should be significant aeration to the dough, if after 4 hours this hasn’t fully happened then you may need to leave it longer.

• After the prove, remove dough onto the work surface, lightly dust with flour.
• Shape dough into a tight ball and leave to rest for 30 minutes.
• After half and hour flatten the ball and reform into a tight ball.
• Place into a heavily floured proving basket and place into fridge overnight.

Shaping dough is an art in itself, and one that takes a lot of explanation, I learnt most of my skills through Youtube and bread website, it took time and practice. The best place to start is here, and excellent video by Ciril Hitz. The basket is also very important, I have a brotform cane basket, that has helped with the final shape and appearance greatly, I would recommend anyone wanting to get really good results to get themselves a good proving basket. I got mine from Bakery Bits.

To Bake

• After an overnight rise 40 mintues before baking remove dough from the fridge, and turn on your oven to its maximum setting.
• In your oven place an upturned large sauce pan on a baking tray, to pre-heat.
• After 40 mintues, remove tray and pan from oven, take pan off tray and set aside, be carefull it is very hot.
• Turn out dough from proving basket onto tray.
• Make one long lengthways slash along to with very sharp blade.
• Cover dough with pre heated sauce pan.
• Bake in the oven for 20 minutes with the pan covering.
• After 20 minutes remove pan and bake loaf uncovered for about 10 minutes
• When loaf is suitable baked remove from oven and allow to cool.

The upturned pan is very important, it acts as an enclosed chamber keeping steam inside, this steam help gelatinise the crust slowing down the rate at which it sets and allowing for great oven spring and improved crust formation.

The final bread I produce has a crunch deep dark crust, with great split when I scored it with the blade. The crumb is soft and quite open, and carries a very light sourness. This is great bread and one I hope you try, this method will probably need some adapting to suit the time you have to bake and the equipment available too you. I think with a bit of practice great bread is available at home.