April 2020

Episode 426 Harvest Eating Podcast

Making sourdough bread does take time but is certainly worth every effort, both for taste and for health. Many gluten-sensitive people can eat sourdough bread which is amazing!

While I have never been diagnosed with gluten sensitivity, I know when I eat bread leavened with yeast my face pays the price! However, I can eat tons of sourdough bread that have had a long fermentation, with no ill effects. HUGE!!

As you progress in your skills you can try different flours made with ancient grains like spelt, einkorn and emmer and dense super-tasty bread like sourdough rye with all sorts of seeds like sunflower, flax, and pumpkin.

Making sourdough is a skill worth having in your culinary arsenal and you really don’t need much equipment other than a kitchen scale, a jar, and some bowls. Sure having cast iron pots, banettons, etc. can help, but they’re not a requirement.

Here are a few of the tools of the trade that I use, remember, I have been cooking and baking many decades and I have built up a good supply of tools.

I make several different kinds of sourdough bread including spelt, mixed grains, rye, cheese, cinnamon raisin, and my absolute favorite is rugbrod, a Danish sourdough rye bread with seeds that is dark and amazing!

I mentioned in the podcast a great resource for learning all sorts of detailed information about sourdough baking. The Perfect Loaf is a highly recommended website with very high-quality recipes, images, and overall information. Certainly worth checking out!

The recipe that follows is a basic sourdough and assumed you already know how to make a sourdough starter. For this recipe, you will need a large bowl, kitchen scale and either your hands or the danish dough hook.

Print Recipe

Basic Sourdough Bread

Prep Time1 d

Cook Time50 mins

Course: Breakfast, lunch

Keyword: bread, sandwich, sourdough, pancakes, whole wheat

Ingredients

700 g AP flour
300 g whole wheat flour
750 g pure water
150 g active sourdough starter
23 g kosher salt (or the salt of your choice-not iodized )

Instructions

——–Starting at 6 pm——-
Autolyse-1-3 hours or longer 🙂
Mix flours and waters in large bowl.
Add water, mix well until all the flour is combined and none remains on the bottom of the bowl.
———Make Dough——-
After autolyse, sprinkle salt over the surface of the bread.
Add sourdough starter, sprnnead of over the surface of the dough.
Pokes the dough with all your fingers to start to incorpoorate the salt and starter into the dough Use the stretch and fold method (pictures below) to fully mix the ingredients..
Cover dough and refrigerate overnight.
Remove bowl from fridge and allow to sit out until about 2 pm, then start your series of stretch and folds.
After 4 stretch and folds, spaced 30-45 minutes apart, shape your bread on a floured work surface, cover and lest rest a few hours.
Shape your dough by folding the the bread onto itself until the top has some tension. Dust bread with flour, cover and let rest while oven preheats.
preheat oven to 500 degrees with cast iron dutch oven with lid inside
After the oven has been at 500 degrees for at leat 30 minutes your ready to put dough into the cast iron pot. Please refer to the audio near the end, for these instructions.