Open 2nd - Basic Sourdough Recipe
- chris barton
- Mar 25, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Jan 19, 2024
Basic sourdough bread:
ingredients
1 cup "fed" sourdough starter 1 1/2 cups to 1 2/3 cups lukewarm water, enough to make a smooth dough 5 cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 1 tablespoon sugar 2 1/4 teaspoons salt
1) Combine the starter, water, and 3 cups of the flour. Beat vigorously for 1 minute.
2) Cover, and let rest at room temperature for 4 hours. Then refrigerate overnight, for about 12 hours.
3) Add the remaining ingredients: 2 cups of flour, sugar, salt/ Knead to form a smooth and shiney dough ball.
4) Allow the dough to rise in a covered bowl until it's relaxed, smoothed out, and risen. Depending on the vigor of your starter, it may become REALLY puffy; or it may just rise a bit. This can take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours. Understand this: sourdough bread (especially sourdough without added yeast) is as much art as science; everyone's timetable will be different. So please allow yourself to go with the flow, and not treat this as an exact, to-the-minute process.
5) Gently divide the dough in half.
6) Gently shape the dough into two oval loaves, and place them on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet (I prefer to use polenta instead of any grease). Cover and let rise until very puffy, about 2 to 4 hours. Don't worry if the loaves spread more than they rise; they'll pick up once they hit the oven's heat. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425°F.
7) Spray the loaves with lukewarm water.
8) Make two fairly deep horizontal slashes in each; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.
9) Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it's a very deep golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool on a rack.
What makes the sour in sourdough bread? It's a combination of lactic and acetic acids, created as the dough rises and ferments. Refrigerating the dough encourages the production of more acetic than lactic acid; and acetic acid is much the tangier of the two. Thus, sourdough that's refrigerated before baking will have a more assertive sour flavor.
When you make this outside of a controlled environment it really relies more on how the dough looks/feels anyway. All of this info is a bunch of guidelines., The recipe can NEVER account for temperature, humidity, contents of your flour, hardness of your water... anyone measuring in grams is just delusional if you're working in an actual kitchen that isn't industrialized.
The hell was a gram thousands of years ago? Use a spoon to fill your cup if you're that insecure. That method is all over the Internet. I just fluff my flour a bit before diving in with my measuring cup.
I wish this was in normal units instead of "cups" (whatever that is). Grams are the only way to measure ingredients for baking accurately
I forgot to work with my dough that I had took 1 cup of starter out and added water and flour too. It has been in my refrigerator all day. What do I do?