Sourdough.
Sourdough once again. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but I don't bake bread without sourdough anymore. It just feels wrong.
This time I've taken a step to a kind of.. non-knead style of baking? Instead of using machines or kneading the machine I'm stretching and folding the dough. This makes the baking kind of simpler, even though you need to do a bit more work while the dough is rising.
So is it simpler? Maybe? No? At least you won't need a machine, you won't need to knead it for long and you'll still get a very nice finished bread.
So now to the bread recipe:
1000 grams of flours (I had 700g wheat flour and 300g wholegrain wheat)
700 grams of water
20 grams of salt
200 grams of active sourdough
The first step is to mix only the flour and water. Just put them all inthe same bowl and mix them together. Don't knead it, but just a simple mix that the water and flour are well mixed together.
This will be left for one hour for autolysis. The autolysis should help to create a stronger gluten in the dough.
After one hour, add sourdough and the salt in the dough.
Just mix them well together once again, the sourdough won't do any good if it's not well in the entire dough. As most of you should know, the sourdough contains wild yeasts (and bacteria) which will make the dough/bread rise. This is also why we don't need bakers yeast.
Sourdough gives a very special flavor in the bread which can't be mimicked by "normal yeast bread".
As all the ingredients are mixed, we'll need to stretch and pull the dough a bit.
I'm lazy and I'm using the same bowl, but this is what you do:
First you can put some water on your hand and fingers, it helps in handling the dough.
- Grab the dough
- Pull it to stretch it
- Fold the dough in the bowl
- Repeat
You'll need to continue this until you can feel that stretching is becoming more difficult. At this point, you can cover your dough with a lid or a cloth, wash your hands and let it wait for 30 minutes. Then you'll repeat it.
The ideal is usually to repeat this 3-4 times during the rise. The dough will have to rise (usually) for 6-8 hours depending on everything - your sourdough, room temperature, dough temperature, etc.
Just let it rise until it's well risen.
The dough is well risen and at this point we can divide the dough into three bread trays.
I've rubbed some butter in my bread trays to make sure the bread will not stick.
This phase was quite simple. I put some flour on my baking board, poured the dough on it and cut it in three pieces. All three pieces were put in their own trays.
I didn't have anyone to take photos of the process so I'm sorry I don't have any photos of it.
The trays are left for 30-60 minutes on the table and then put in the fridge.
Next morning I chose the best looking one and baked it.
As stated on a previous post, I'm usually making 3 doughs in the fridge and baking them on 3 consecutive days. Fresh bread every day and I don't need to bake daily!
I recommend everyone will get a food temp. meter. That's the best way to know when your bread is ready.
Approx. 30-40 minutes in 200-225 degrees Celsius. More or less might be required based on your dough and your oven.
This beauty is what I got.
Highly recommended! If you want bigger slices of bread, I'd recommend increasing the dough size with 25% or using different size bread trays. Or different size bread. Or being different size yourself!
I'm too tired to come up with anything funny. But bread won't wait.