Oh my goodness, baking bread is funner ‘n hell. I bake about two loaves of bread and a focaccia each week, and one of those is entirely mine. A baking obsession, or maybe an eating obsession, plagues me. I’m cool with it. I’m going to tell you how I bake bread, so you can obsess, too.
If you want to start baking sourdough, you’re likely already searching blogs and baking sites for the weird keywords: mother, levain, autolyze, lame, banneton. Keep doing that, because though I’ve compressed a ton of information into one relatively short blog post, the devil is in the details, and these you learn along the path, my friends.
My best advice:
- Practice a lot and eat the bread you bake, even if it is triangular, too soft, a weird shape, ugly. It all tastes good, and every loaf is a chance to get your hands into a beautiful dough.
- Get a mother from a friend and keep it in a covered jar in the refrigerator until you’re ready to make a levain, which is the starter for your loaves.
- Mother, starter, levain… these terms are used interchangeably. It’s confusing. I know.
- Feed your mother two days before you want to bake bread.
- To feed your mother, put 25 grams of it into a big jar (use the rest of it in pancakes or focaccia), add 100 grams water and 100 grams flour, stir until it’s smooth, and let it sit on the kitchen counter until it has tripled in volume.
- Feeding takes between 3 and 9 hours, depending on room temperature. Once fed, the mother is “active.”
- Make levain the day before you want to bake bread.
- To make levain for baking bread, put 25 grams of active mother (fed the day before) in a jar or small bowl, add 100 grams water and 100 grams flour, and let it sit on the counter, same as for feeding your mother.
- Always keep a little bit of mother in your refrigerator so you always have some to start with.
- Extra mother can go to a friend or into recipes.
- I keep a jar of active, fed mother, and one of “old” mother that I don’t feed in my fridge. Old mother is what I use in recipes like pancakes, crackers, and focaccia. Old mother pancakes. What could be better?
- Keep your hands slightly wet when you’re working with dough.
- It took me a year to understand any of this shit. It will be okay.
Since you’re here, searching for weird keywords, say hello to my mother, Mavis. Lovely Stina, here is your recipe.
AuthorRoseCategorybread, project cooking, sourdoughStir together the mother/starter, flour, and water in a pint jar or medium bowl. Loosely cover (air needs to be able to escape) and allow to sit out in a warm place (about 70° F) until bubbly and tripled in size. If your kitchen is cool, this may mean setting the levain out overnight and making dough the next morning. If your kitchen is hot, make your levain in the morning and check it after about 4 hours.
Mix the salt and 100 grams of water in a teacup, and set aside while you start the autolyze step.
In a large soup pot with a lid, mix the flours and 600 grams of water with your hands (or only one hand) until combined. The dough should be a little bit rough but soft enough to easily push around. Cover and let sit in a warm place for 1 to 4 hours, until the levain is ready.
Once the levain is tripled and bubbly, pour it onto the dough in the pot and mix together with your hands. This makes the dough-in-progress even stickier and gets the fermentation party started. Let sit for about 30 minutes.
Add the salt water to the dough, poking some dents here and there to allow the dough to soak up the liquid. Let sit for about 30 minutes.
Now that all the bread ingredients are combined, allow the dough to rise in the pot with the lid on for about 4 hours total at room temperature. After the first 30 minutes to an hour, uncover the pot and with wet hands, pick up a pretend corner of the dough (because pots are generally round and corner-less), and fold it toward the center, onto itself. Do this stretch and fold with wet hands for all of the pretend corners of the dough. Repeat after 30 minutes, twice.
When the dough has risen and only slightly bounces back from a gentle finger poking, dump it gently from the pot onto your clean kitchen counter. Let it sit for about 30 minutes.
Spread the sesame seeds on a dinner plate and set aside. Sprinkle a generous dose of whole wheat flour into 2 linen-lined bannetons or 2 bowls lined with clean kitchen towels. Use lots of flour. Set aside.
With a damp knife or bench scraper, divide the dough in half, sliding each half to its own spot on the counter. Shape each half into a round. You can do this by rotating the dough in a circle, gently pressing dough under and toward the center as you go with damp hands. Let sit for 30 minutes.
Create the final loaf shapes by gently flattening out each dough into a square, folding the top down onto the center, folding each side into the center, then rolling the whole shebang downward to the bottom while holding all that dough together with damp hands into a tight little roll. Gently shape into rounds with the seam side down. (This is a tricky little mother to master. Just practice.)
Scoop up a loaf with damp hands, pat a little water onto the pretty, round side of the loaf, and lightly roll into the sesame seeds on the plate. Place the loaves sesame-seed-side down into the prepared bannetons or bowls. Place uncovered in the refrigerator overnight.
In the morning, place two covered dutch ovens into the real oven and preheat to 500° F for 30 minutes to really hotten those pots. Keep the dough in the refrigerator until the oven and pots have preheated.
Tip one loaf out of its banneton or bowl onto a rectangular piece of baking parchment. Quickly slash a few scores into the top of loaf with a sharp knife, razor blade, or lame, then lift the loaf by the parchment edges into one of the very hot dutch ovens and replace the cover. Repeat for the other loaf.
Bake, covered, at 500° F for 15 minutes, then without opening the oven, reduce heat to 450° F and bake another 15 minutes. Remove the dutch oven lids, letting steam escape (watch your face), and bake at 450° F for another 10 to 15 minutes.
To get nice slices, let the bread cool completely. To indulge immediately, just eat it! Happy baking, friends!