Simple Sourdough Recipe

Directions

1. Mix and Autolyse

   Mix the flour and water together in a large bowl until fully incorporated.  Leave, covered with a tea towel, at room temperature for an hour.  An autolyse is a simple yet important step in making sourdough bread. This stage allows the flour to fully hydrate and begins the gluten development.  After an hour your dough will be less shaggy and sticky to extensible and easier to knead and shape.

   Add your starter and salt.  Your starter should be rising and falling with regularity and be nice and bubbly.  Use it just as it is falling.

   Some recipes will advise to mix your starter in with the water at the beginning before the autolyse.  This is perfectly fine but a true autolyse is just flour and water so add it afterwards. Mix in the batter-like starter in with your dough thoroughly for a few minutes, then add your salt. 

   Coax the dough out on to a lightly floured surface, ready to knead.

2. Kneading

   The easiest way to do this is to use a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment. Mix the dough for 6 minutes on the lowest speed, then 4 minutes on the next speed up. The dough should be smoother and stretchy, and pass the windowpane test if you pull and stretch a small section – it should be translucent and not rip.   The advantage of this is that you can leave the dough to proof for 4 hours without handling it.

   By hand - head over to our Techniques section to see various methods.  Sourdough is a wetter dough so stretching and folding tends to work better.  Wet your hands or use flour and stretch the furthest edge of the dough away from you and fold it in on itself in the middle. Turn and do this on each side several times until you feel that the dough is more elastic and smoother.

3. Bulk rise

   Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel.  It needs to proof in a place where the temperature is stable. If you don’t have a proofing box, on top of the fridge is a good place or anywhere that is not near a window or a door.  Your first proof should be 4 hours.  Every 30 minutes, perform a stretch and fold in the bowl on each side and leave, covered, again. This strengthens the dough, equalizes the dough’s temperature and traps air inside the dough.

   After this proof, your dough should have doubled in size.

4. Preshaping

   This stage moulds your sourdough into the basic shape you want and develops surface tension on the outer skin of the dough to help hold its shape during the final proof.  It’s where you coax the gluten strands to move in the right direction.  Be gentle and use your dough scraper to help you.

   Tuck the dough scraper underneath the dough as you turn it around, encouraging a round shape.  Do nothing to the top, you are working the underneath of the dough.  Keep moving the dough around, creating a circle with the dough scraper and you’ll feel the top tighten up. Let the gluten relax for a 30 minute bench rest.

5. Shaping

   Shaping a sourdough batard requires you to handle the dough a little more than a traditional boule. Don't worry, as long as you are gentle with it, you should retain the bubbles. There are several ways to do this. Head over to our techniques section on our School of Baking to see one method.  Here’s another way described below:

   Stretch the dough out to an oblong shape and fold each opposite side into the middle, slightly overlapping each other. Turn the dough 90 degrees and do the same with the other two sides. Now you have folded in all 4 sides of the rectangle. Now roll up the dough from the longer end gently like a swiss roll and press the seam to seal.  Gently move it towards you to tighten the surface and put it in a floured banneton basket seam side up.

   If the dough feels a little dense, like you have gotten rid of some of the air, leave it out on the worktop for an hour in the banneton before putting it in the fridge.

6. Second prove

   A cold retard is great for improved flavour and it allows you to bake once you get up in the morning.  Cover the dough, and place it in the fridge for 8 – 12 hours.

7. Score and bake

   When you wake up in the morning, preheat your oven and your dutch oven to 250C for an hour if you can.  Carefully take your dutch oven of the oven and tip the dough out of the banneton basket onto parchment paper.  Score two slashes with a sharp knife or a lame quickly and picking up the sides of the paper, life the dough in to the dutch oven, putting the lid on.

   Turn the oven down to 220 and bake for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 20 – 30 minutes, depending on how dark you like to crust to be.