I’ve been making a loaf of bread every week for a few months now and it is starting to look ok. The recipe and the instructions are from a brilliant course I did at the Assembly Bakery. If you get a chance to do a breadmaking course it will improve your bread radically!
The videos show each stage of bread making, you can watch the ones you need to, or just follow the recipe at the bottom if you prefer. It is worth looking at alternative methods on YouTube too because there is more than one way to do this!
The second loaf came out better than the first. This tells me that the pot wasn’t hot enough the first time round and I need to leave it in for longer. Loaf number 2 is really tall and has crispy dark bits on it. Nom!
This is not a quick job, it takes about 5 hours to make a sourdough loaf like this and that doesn’t include the overnight element. I tend to bake 2 loaves on a Saturday or Sunday morning and I do chores in between each stage. That way I can reward myself with nice fresh bread in a relatively clean house when it is done.
White Sourdough Bread
Ingredients
Leaven (use this to start your bread off)
- 20 g active starter
- 100 g strong white bread flour
- 100 ml water let it rest if straight from the tap
Sourdough loaf
- 220 g Leaven prepared overnight
- 350 g strong white bread flour
- 50 g rye, or wholemeal flour
- 260 ml water let it rest if straight from the tap
- 10 g salt
Instructions
The night before....
- The night before you want to bake, prepare the Leaven. Mix the starter with 100g flour and water and leave covered overnight.
- Baking day
- Add the rest of the flours and the water to the gloopy mix you made last night.
Mix as best you can, cover and leave for 20 mins.
A constant temp is ideal here, if you have a proving setting on your oven it will be about 40 degrees. - After the resting add the salt, don't freak out because it looks like a lot, it needs it! Let it rest for 30 mins.
- Stretch and fold and leave to prove for 30 minutes.
Do this 3 times. - Flour your work surface and gently form the bread into a ball.
Use a fine flour like rice to dust a bowl for the bread to rise in and dip the smooth side of the bread into rye flour before placing in the bowl.Cover gently and let rise for 1 to one and a half hours. - Heat up a large heavy lidded pot in the oven - 250 degrees if you can.
- Tip the risen loaf into the pot and slash a pattern into the top.
- Cook with the lid on for 20 mins and the lid off for 15. The loaf should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.