Everyone loves a good artisanal freshly baked bread.
Last year I got really into baking sourdough bread and made my own starter for it. I made different variations of white bread and found out that a Dutch oven us a brilliant tool for baking bread at home. No need to throw water in the oven or some weird tricks like that. I made bread pretty regularly at some point but when I moved so much between two homes and cities, I had to put my starter aside. I dried my starter so it would be safe indefinitely until I wanted to start the baking again.
Now that I’m settled into my new home, I dug out my starter and gave it a good few feedings. My starter is a youngling still, I know my grandma has a starter that’s probably 40+ years old and when she used to make HUGE patches of rye bread, I’m talking 30 breads at a time, the bowl she used was never washed. She purposefully left some of the dough in and let it dry in between uses. I’m not that hardcore with baking but if I had a spare bowl for my Kitchen Aid, I might consider sacrificing one bowl to just bread making.
For this bread I had a nice bubbly starter in the fridge, I took a little dollop of it out in the morning and fed it. In the afternoon it was looking active and ready to be used in a dough. I mixed in the water, flour, salt and tiny bit of syrup, and let my stand mixer do the hard work. Then I put the beautiful raw little ball in the fridge overnight to proof. Periodically during the evening I went in and gently folded the dough a few times. Next morning I did one last fold and shaping and let it do the final proofing in room temperature. I did a simple cross scoring and baked the bread inside my trusty little Dutch oven.
Making sourdough bread is a longer process than using yeast, but the results more than make up for it. Yeast bread doesn’t have the time to develop that delicious taste that artisanal bread is known for and apparently it’s less healthy too.
I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to baking, and I blame my grandma for it. The little things count, the process is long and you really need to know your dough.
This bread turned out alright but there is room for improvement; my dought was too dry, which I noticed when folding it, and I should have let the bread take it’s time during the final proofing. You can kinda see the layers where I have folded the bread, which wouldn’t happen if the dought was more hydrated. I got a pretty nice crust all over, but could have given it a few more minutes. If I had been more patient with the final proof, I’d have gotten bigger bubbles, which is what I want.