Baking with your Sourdough starter

If you have a preferred recipe, feel free to use it. If you are new to baking sourdough, the following recipe is a good starting point.

• Mix water and starter until the starter is dissolved
• Add flour and salt and mix well into a shaggy dough until there is no visible flour, cover with a tea towel and leave it to rest for 30-45min. (note the time when you mixed the dough for rough reference later) 
• After 30-45min do your first set of stretches and folds. Wet hands work best. Pull up the dough on one side and fold it over the rest of the dough, turn your bowl 90 degrees and repeat. Do this at least 4 times, once around the bowl or until the dough resists the stretches. Make sure you don’t tear the dough. Cover with a tea towel and rest for 30 min, then repeat this step. 
• After the second stretch and fold, move on to coil folds. Wet both hands. Push your hands from the sides under the dough and pull the dough up, then fold it back down. Turn the bowl 180 degrees and repeat this on the other side. Then turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat the first step. Make sure the dough does not tear. Rest for 30min. 
• The dough may need another 1-2 coil folds. Once it starts to hold its shape after 30min (doesn’t spread significantly in the bowl) you can stop coil folds. 
• Leave the dough covered with a tea towel in a warm space (24-26c) and check progress every hour. 
• The dough should have risen visibly, is puffy, jiggles a bit, is not sticky to touch and comes off the bowl when lightly pulled. We are looking at a 70% rise (not doubling). This usually takes me around 6-7 hours from the point of mixing the dough. 
• Dust your bannetone with flour (rice flour is best), or prepare a colander or bowl with a clean tea towel, dust the towel thoroughly with flour.
• Shape your dough. Lightly flour the work surface (rice flour is best). Turn out your dough onto the surface. With lightly wet hands, start pulling the sides of the dough outwards very carefully, not tearing the dough, into a rectangle. Flip one side (a third roughly) into the middle, then the other side on top of that. Now roll up the dough like a burrito. With both hands carefully pull the dough towards you to build surface tension in the dough. Once it has enough tension flip it into your bannetone or bowl upside down and close the open side by pulling the outside of the dough into the middle (stitching the dough). Dust the dough with flour and cover with a tea towel, and leave in the fridge overnight (roughly 4-5c). The dough can stay in the fridge for up to 36h, but it is best to bake between 12-18h cold proof. 
• Preheat your oven to 240c. If you have a dutch oven, put it into the oven to preheat well, at least 30-45 min. If you don’t have a dutch oven, an oven proof pot with lid, roasting dish or similar with a lid will do as long as it is big and tall enough for the dough. 
• Once the oven and dutch oven is hot, turn out the dough onto a big enough sheet of baking paper (or silicone baking mat). With a sharp knife or scorer make a single cut across the dough. You would want the cut at an angle of about 45 degrees and about a cm deep. 
• Take the dutch oven out and place the dough on the baking paper inside (careful it’s hot). If you have ice cubes, place 2-3 ice cubes under the baking paper on the sides (they shouldn’t touch the dough). Lid on and back into the oven for 25min at 240c.
• Take the lid off and bake for another 20min at 210c 
• The bread is ready baked when you knock on the bottom of the bread and it sounds hollow. Or you have a core thermometer if you have one. The bread is ready at a core temperature of 96c and above.
• Let the bread fully cool on a wire rack before you cut it. The crumb will still set while it’s hot.

I hope your first bread baking adventure went well and your bread was a success. 

You can keep your starter going by feeding it every day, or once a week if you keep it in the fridge. 

Your daily maintenance feed at room temperature is 2g Starter, 20g Flour, 14g Water (1:10:7). If you want to store it in the fridge, feed it 15g Starter, 30g Flour, 25g Water. Let it sit at room temperature for an hour then put it in the fridge. Repeat this feed once a week to keep your starter fresh and working.

To prepare your fridge starter for baking, take out 10g of starter and feed it with 20g Flour and 14g Water and leave at room temperature. Once at peak, feed again (no discard, use all the starter) with 70g Flour and 50g Water. Start mixing your dough once it reached peak.

Please follow me on social media for practical tips on baking and how to keep and feed your starter.

Everyone deserves good bread!

Lots of bread love, 

Susanne