
This is probably the easiest way to get an amazing loaf of sourdough bread. It also can get you an amazing ear. I had never gotten an ear before and on my first time there it was. Make sure to make a deep enough slice for that ear to pop up.
Easy Sourdough Bread
Adapted from: Culinary Exploration
Ingredients
- 257g Water
- 100g Active Starter
- 13g Sea Salt
- 388g bread flour (Can sub 50g for Whole Wheat) (add vital wheat gluten to AP flour to get it up to higher protein, read instructions on the VWG container on how much to add)
Directions
- 7-8pm night before baking, feed starter and leave at room temp. The idea here is to only leave a little bit of starter after its used in the bread. Then the next day you can feed it again and make bread and so on. It’s a repeatable process. You would start off with something like 15-20g of starter and add 100g of flour and 100g of water. Then only use 200g when making the dough.
- Next Morning – combine starter, water, and salt and mix it until the starter is mixed in a bit. Add the flour and mix all ingredients in a large bowl with a wooden spoon or something similar. Use your wet hands to get it to come together a bit more just to get rid of any pockets of flour. Don’t try to overmix it. It will look ugly at this point so there is no use. Put it back in the bowl covered to let it rest.
- 10-15 mins later – Spending less that a minute, knead it into a more smooth dough ball. Pop in back into the bowl and let rest covered.
- 30 mins later – Super easy stretch and fold. Only way to understand this is to watch it. Make it back into a ball afterwards and let rest for 6 hours.
- 6 hrs later – Pre-shape and into the shape of the banneton and let rest for 10 mins.
- 10-15 mins later – Flour banneton, flour dough and flip over. Shape the dough into a simple oval and put it into the banneton seam side up.
- 1.5-2 hrs later – Put in fridge and let rest until you want to bake it.
- At time of your choice – Preheat oven 425F with the baking stone or steel on the middle rack for about an hour before you want to bake.
- 1 hr later – Take the dough out of fridge and turn it out onto a peel. Using a sharp knife, a ,or a razor score the dough. Place the dough onto the stone or steel and cover with a large pot. One big enough to cover the loaf.
- Bake for 20mins with the pot on then remove the pot and bake for another 20-30 mins depending on how dark you want the crust.