Beginners Sourdough Bread
Equipment
- 1 Dutch oven with lid
- 1 1 Large mixing bowl
- Tea towels
- Baking parchment
Ingredients
- 3½ Cup All purpose flour
- ½ Cup Sourdough starter
- 1⅓ Cup Water Warm, but not hot
- 2 tsp Salt
Instructions
Get it started
- Feed your sourdough starter ~6 hours before starting to make the bread dough. Make sure it is active.
- Once it has been fed and rested, combine active starter, warm water, flour, and salt in large mixing bowl.
- Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest for 30 minutes
Fold the dough
- Grab the edge of the dough and pull it up stretching it out. Put the dough back into the center of the bowl and rotate 90°. Pull the dough again, and rotate a total of 4 times.
- Cover with a towel and let it rest.
- Repeat the stretching and resting 2 more times (total of 3 times).
- Cover with a lid, towel, or plastic wrap and allow it to ferment and double in size. This should take 6-12 hours.
Make a loaf
- Lightly flour your work space and place the dough on it. Fold the dough onto itself. You can make it into a ball by gently spinning.
- Turn over the dough ball and shape. Fold the two sides over to meet at the middle then repeat.
- Lightly flour a tea towel and place it in a bowl. Transfer the dough on to the tea towel.
- Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 12-14 hours. If you want to have it done quicker, you can set aside at room temperature for 4 hours.
Baking the bread
- Preheat oven to 500℉ and place Dutch oven with lid in to heat it up. Let it heat for ~1 hour.
- After Dutch oven has heated for 1 hour, remove dough from refrigerator and place it on some parchment/baking paper.
- Lightly dust dough with flour and score in a design or a simple slice along the top for expansion.
- Transfer baking parchment and dough to the dutch oven. Be careful! It will be hot! Place the lid back on and put in the oven.
- Bake for 20 minutes.
- Remove the lid and turn down temperature to 475℉ and back an additional 15-30 minutes or until it is brown.
- Carefully remove bread from dutch oven allow it to cool.
Notes
The resting time listed is if you want the dough to very slow rise. You can have it rise faster by leaving it out rather than putting it in the refrigerator.