Bread.
Equipment. This bread should be baked in a vessel that can both rapidly transmit heat to the dough and that can trap the steam produced by the dough while it bakes. Examples of such vessels include dutch ovens, cast iron combo cookers, and tightly covered souffle dishes. You should be able to safely seal and unseal any vessel that you use while it is hot. A rigid plastic or metal bench scraper may also be useful for shaping and handling the dough after it has finished rising.
Ingredients for two loaves. 500g white bread flour 300g all-purpose white flour 100g whole wheat flour 100g whole grain rye flour 775g water 20g salt 200g sourdough starter at peak (look after bread recipe for starter recipe)
Procedure. (1) Mix dough and autolyse. (a) Combine flours in a large bowl. Dissolve salt into water, then add water to flours, mixing thoroughly to ensure that there is no dry flour. (b) Scrape down sides of bowl, cover bowl, and let rest until dough has become stronger and slightly elastic, perhaps 8 hours or more. Notes: Immediately after mixing, the dough will be very gloppy, wet, and slack. After the long rest (called an autolyse), the dough may still feel wetter than one is accustomed to, but it will cohere much better than before and will be slightly elastic. The 8 hour time is probably not minimal; I usually just mix up the dough and let it rest overnight or longer. (2) Main rise. (a) Spread 200g of starter over the top of the dough, then fold the dough over the layer of starter. Continue folding the dough over itself until the starter is incorporated. (b) Allow to rise in a warm place until the dough feels light, pillowy, and full of air. This will take perhaps 4–5 hours if the dough is kept at 85F throughout. The dough will have increased in volume by perhaps 50%. Notes: The time needed for the dough to rise will depend heavily on tem- perature and on the sourdough starter that you use, among other things. One thing to keep in mind is that sourdough is typically much slower to rise than commercial yeast. Getting a good feel for what the dough is like when it has risen the right amount may take some experimentation. 1 2 SOURDOUGH BREAD
(3) Divide and preshape. (a) Carefully pour dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured counter. (b) Cut dough into even pieces and use the bench scraper to loosely shape each piece into a round. The exterior of each round should be fairly tense. (c) Allow the rounds to rest for 20 minutes or so. The rounds will sag somewhat during this time. If the rounds spread too much, then repeat the previous step and allow them to rest for another 20 minutes before proceeding. Notes: Handling a dough of this sort may take some practice. Youtube (this video, for example) is a good resource for seeing how people do it, and watching some videos before trying either this step or the next one is highly recommended. (4) Shape. (a) Line a bowl with generously floured cloth for every round that you have. (b) Very lightly flour the top of a round, then flip it over so that its floured side is down. (c) Fold up the round like an envelop: first fold the top edge into the center of the dough, then the two sides, and then the bottom edge. (d) Finally, fold the top half of the found over itself one more time and place it in one of the cloth-lined bowls with the fold facing upward. Lightly pinch to seal the fold if it is coming undone. (5) Final proof. (a) Cover bowls of dough and place into refrigerator. (b) Allow to sit in fridge for perhaps 12–16 hours. Notes: The idea here is to allow the dough to slowly rise in the fridge until it is in a state that will yield maximal expansion when you bake the dough. The time the dough will take to reach this state is dependent on the temperature of one’s fridge and the state of one’s starter, and it may take some experimentation to get the timing exactly right. (6) Bake. (a) Place empty baking vessel into oven and turn on over to 500F. (b) When the oven (and the baking vessel) are done preheating, remove a loaf from the fridge and remove it from its cloth-lined bowl by inverting it onto a floured surface, then carefully pulling off the floured cloth. (c) Slash the loaf using a sharp knife or razor blade. (d) Remove the hot baking vessel from the oven and uncover it. Using two floured hands, carefully pick up the loaf and drop it into the baking vessel, then cover the baking vessel and return it to the oven. (e) Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the baking vessel from the oven and uncover it. Return it uncovered to the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 450F. Bake for a further 25 minutes until the loaf is well-browned, then remove loaf from oven and allow to fully cool on a rack. Notes: In the first 20 minutes of baking, the loaf will do more or less all the expansion it is going to do. When uncovered, it will be considerably expanded, but pale. While it is tempting to cut the loaf immediately when SOURDOUGH BREAD 3
it comes out of the oven, the crumb will likely be a bit gummy or custardy that point. The loaf will not achieve its final texture until fully cool. Sourdough Starter. Ingredients. white flour whole wheat flour water Procedure. (1) Mix equal parts white flour and whole wheat flour, then add water until you have a mixture that has the consistency of thick batter. (2) Cover with a cloth and leave in a warm spot for a few days. Check the mixture periodically to see if bubbles have formed. If not bubble have appeared by the third day, then wait longer. (3) Once the starter is active, begin to feed it. Do this by discarding about three quarters of it, then replacing what you discarded with white flour, whole wheat flour, and water mixed in a 1:1:2 ratio by mass. (4) Feed the starter once per day at roughly the same time each day. After about a week of this, the starter should begin to rise and fall in a fairly steady cycle over the day. After feeding, it will slowly expand until it is very light and filled with bubbles. After reaching its maximum size, it will collapse in on itself and shrink again. It will smell increasingly acidic as it progresses through this cycle. To use in bread. Ideally, one should use starter at a time in its cycle when it is very active, which is usually just before the time when its reaches its maximum size. At this time, the starter should be sufficiently bubbly that a small spoonful of it dropped into water will float. Maintaining starter. To keep a starter alive, one should simply repeat the feeding procedure outlined above once a day. If one bakes infrequently, then it is also possible to feed the starter and then place it in the fridge. Doing thisslows down the starter enough that it may only need to be fed once a week. One should remove a refrigerated starter from the fridge and feed it daily for a few days before using it to make bread. Further notes. • The blend of flours and the amount of water can be varied considerably. Using a higher portion of whole-grain flour will make the dough weaker and harder to handle; one can partially compensate for this by using a higher portion of bread flour. Since both bread flour and whole-grain flours are more absorbent than all-purpose flour, using higher portions of either of them may require slightly more water. • The bread recipe above is a modified version of one that appears in the excellent book Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. One of the key differ- ences is that this recipe relies almost entirely upon time to develop gluten, whereas Robertson calls for folding at intervals during the main fermen- tation. Both can be made to produce good bread, but I have found the method here to be more reliable and less effort. 4 SOURDOUGH BREAD
• The bread recipe calls for several fairly long waiting periods, so one may find it easiest to spread out the process over three days. A convenient schedule is to do step 1 on the first day, steps 2–4 on the second day, and to bake the bread on the morning of the third day.