A Simple Sourdough Recipe
— By Lucy Higgins
Hi! Like many people, this health crisis has got me feeling helpless, not particularly supported by my government, and no longer in my 9 to 5. So, in order to help me ground, feed my family, and get away from news articles, I’ve been baking bread.
This is a slightly adapted version of the Tartine recipe, if you want to follow at home :).
1. In a bowl pour 200g of your starter into 700ml of water at about 26C/80F, stir.
2. In a separate bowl/container mix your flour - 900g of a white flour and 100g of a whole wheat, rye, khorasan, whatever you think is interesting!
3. Pour the flour into the starter/water mixture. Give it a good mix. And let it sit for around 30 minutes.
4. Add another 50ml of water at 26C/80F, and 20g of salt (we use Maldon). Squeeze the salt in with your hands, it should predominantly break down after a couple of minutes.
5. Fold the dough in on itself and pop it into a sealable bowl/container, this is where it’ll spend the next 3-4 hours during the bulk fermentation period. During this period you want to keep your kitchen at a constant temp of about 25C-28C/78F-80F.
6. Every 30 minutes for the first two hours turn your bread. This involves wetting your hand, sliding it underneath the dough and folding it in on itself. Do this 2-4 times.
7. After completing 4 turns let your dough rest for another 1-2 hours.
8. Lightly flour your dough and tip it onto your bench. Cup the dough in half and flip it onto its floured side. Fold it in on itself and try to form a circle using your hands and the bench. You want to create tension in the loaf. Let it rest for about 30 minutes.
9. Time to shape! This involves a number of steps. First, pull the bottom two corners of your dough towards you, as far as they’ll go without breaking. Then fold that back onto the dough, at about the halfway point. Place your hands on the left and right side of the dough and pull horizontally. Fold these sides back on the centre point of the dough, like wrapping a nappy/burrito. Pull the top of the dough over your newly formed nappy/burrito, while doing this fold the dough completely over, so the side that was sitting on the bench is now facing upwards.
10. Time to form a circular loaf, creating tension using the bench again and circular motions with your hands.
11. Let this rest in the fridge overnight, in a floured bowl, covered with a tea-towel.
12. Good morning! Let’s bake. Turn your oven on to 260C/500F and place your sealed cooking device in the oven to heat up. We use a dutch oven combo. Take your loaves out of the fridge while the oven heats up.
13. Dust the surface on your first loaf with ideally a rice flour/flour 50/50 combo, but if not flour will work perfectly well.
14. Now that your oven is up to temperature grab out your cooking device, leaving the lid in the oven to stay hot. Rest the base of your cooking device on a heat proof service and tip your dough into the hot base. Be careful here, avoiding getting burnt.
15. Time to score your loaf aka my favourite part of baking, outside of eating the finished product. We score the loaves to help them fully expand in the oven. There are a bunch of different techniques online, we encourage you to look them up and see which you like best! A good starting point however is a simple crescent cut or a square.
16. Pop the cover of your cooking device (dutch oven/heavy casserole pot) back on and place it in the oven immediately reducing the temperature to 230C/450F. Bake your loaf for 20 minutes.
17. After 20 minutes and using oven mitts/thick tea-towels carefully remove the lid/top of your cooking device. Now bake for 15-25 minutes, trying to develop a deep caramelised colour. As we know, ovens cook at different temperatures so keep a close eye on your loaf, try not to open the oven door while you’re doing this, if you can help it. The oven at our previous house would caramelise the loaves in 7 minutes (super quick!), while the oven at the moment takes about 22 minutes.
18. Now that your loaf is a beautifully burnish golden brown colour, carefully remove the cooking device from the oven and place your loaf on a cooling rack. We don’t have one at the moment so we just use a colander, which works well.Before it’s too cool, add a thick lather of butter or whatever condiment you prefer, and enjoy!
27 - 03 - 20