I really like this youtube video from Food52 with Sarah Owens on a great sourdough bread recipe. The video goes into a lot of details on how to prepare and shape the dough. Since the recipe is just sourdough starter, water, flour, salt the details on technique for mixing and shaping is really important. Mostly I try not to deflate the dough. I have been watching the video many times and make the bread once or twice a week. I found using a proofing basket made a big difference in shaping the dough. Without a basket I baking in a loaf pan since the dough become really flat without the proofing basket. The proofing basket same with a lame for slicing the top. I am not great and the fancy designs but usually do a single slice on the top. I found the dutch oven works well for developing a good crust. The taste of the bread with the starter is really great and I will probably not go back to using yeast in breads.
video on youtube
Ingredients
- 300g water
- 75g starter
- 420g all purpose flour (I usually use King Arthur all purpose, or special)
- 8g fine sea salt
Steps
- add 300g room temperature water to bowl
- add 75g starter to bowl
- mix and break up starter with hand in bowl until starter mostly dissolved
- add flour to mixture
- with hand combine flour with water for 3-4 minutes until all of the flour is worked in to a shaggy mass
- cover with plastic wrap
- let sit for 30-60m
- add 8g salt and combine with dough, can wet hand
- leave dough for bulk fermentation
- each 30-45 minutes do stretch and fold each 30m for total of of 3-4 hours
- in summer may be 3 hours and in winter can be 6-8 hours
- for preshape fold each side into middle, then fold each corner
- let dough sit for 10-30m minutes to relax dough
- flour proofing basket generously, either using liner or just basket
- fold over dough and tuck in, four top of dough well
- flip over, place in proofing basket seem side up
- cover and place in fridge overnight
- remove from fridge and let rest until feels like water balloon about 1h
- heat dutch oven to 450
- place dough from proofing basket on parchment paper
- score top of dough
- lower bread by holding onto parchment paper in hot dutch oven
- bake for 20m with cover on dutch oven
- remove cover bake another 15-20m, can check temp ready when about 200 F
- remove from dutch oven and let cool on a wire rack for about 15m before eating
