 |
| Alu the lizard from Bali, bird and butterfly binoculars, fan, sourdough loaf. On painted tile table from Ravello |
The TOP SECRET: DON’T OVER PROVE aka “PROOF”)
I’ve been cooking sourdough bread for over six years now, well before the Covid lockdown sourdough craze.
I’ve watched about a zillion YouTube vids on the subject.
These days I’ve got it down. I bake two to three times a week. And always I have a loaf with good rise (aka “oven spring”), nice texture (aka “crumb”) and great taste (aka “yum”).
Watch the vids by all means. I recommend the Foodgeek. He really really knows his sourdough. But you don’t have to. What I give you here is the fair dinkum guaranteed deal to bake a great loaf every time. It’s the bomb.
1. Ingredients
300 g flour
(250 g Bread flour; 50 g something else: Wholewheat, Rye, Spelt, Buckwheat, Malted. Or whatever. Or nothing else and only Bread flour)
180 g water
70 g starter
6 g salt
This makes a small loaf which is all I want, as not many in our household eat bread. There’s me, the dog, the birds and the fish. It’s a cute little loaf, around a pound, which will last a couple several days. Then you get to back again. I do, two or three times a week.
Flour: I usually do 250g of Bread Flour and 50g of something else: whole, malted, rye, buckwheat or spelt, usually. Sometimes I toss in some flax seeds and sunflower seeds. Somethings some oars, not a lot.
Water: Not straight from the tap, unless you know it hasn’t got chlorine, fluoride or whatever. I use boiled water, as boiling drives them of. Or use bottled. I keep a small bottle of boiled from the kettle, right by my flours. Use at room temperature.
Starter: I assume you have this. If not, see any one of a zillion recipes on the Internet, YouTube… A day before baking feed with 40g water and 40 flour (bread and whole, half half). Pull out of fridge hours before preparing dough, to give time to get very happy.
Salt: you can go saltless if you must, bit the bread will taste pretty bland I use sea salt, low sodium.
2. Mixing
These days I do this straight in my mixmaster bowl. I measure. I used not to measure, but I reckon the reason I have my consistency now is because I measure. But I don’t worry too much (in fact at all), about the bread hydration, bakers' percentages, and so on. I used to. But I found the dough was always too moist and didn’t bake well, so I don’t trust them. This recipe and this method gives consistent good results.
So, on the scales with the bowl. Add 250 of bread flour, add the additional flour, whichever you fancy, add salt, stir with whisk and put aside. Put your water jug on the scale and zero it out (“tare”). Pour in your room temp water, 180g. Keep it on the scale. Add 70g of starter to the water and stir. Don’t worry if it’s a bit more, it doesn’t matter really.
Put in mixer with dough hook. Turn on until the water and dough are well mixed and the dough has turned into a ball. Enough. I’ve seen vids that say “never knead sourdough”. But I’ve found it doesn’t matter either way. With this very little bit of kneading, the bread turns out with a more even crumb, whereas without, I was getting too many large holes, which look cool, and are rather a source of pride, but too big and where do you put the Vegemite?
3. Stretch and Fold
OK, so turn off the mixer and put the dough ball into a ceramic bowl, either oiled a bit, or with some water spread in it. This is to help the rise during proving.
What I do next is one of the secrets: a jug of boiling water into the microwave. This gives moisture and warmth and creates the perfect proving cabinet. Then bowl of dough in. No need to cover as there’s that moisture. Time an hour.
After an hour — or more, if you’re delayed somewhere, it doesn’t matter. Pull out and do first stretch and fold.
There’s plenty of vids on stretch and fold so I won’t cover that here. Here’s one.
Do that at three times more, every half hour.
After the last stretch and fold, leave for another half hour then turn out carefully onto a board. Try not to knock out the air.
This is a kind of tricky bit. On the board and with a pastry slice thingie, you need so slide the ball on the board to develop skin tension. Then onto the banneton and give a short time more for rising. Here’s a vid on how to develop skin tension.
And this is the really big secret. You don’t want to over prove the dough. Do not over prove! If anything, under prove. So, maximum 30 more minutes after final shaping, and even zero minutes.
And then another secret: put it in the fridge with a cover, like a shower cap, or plastic bag, and leave overnight. What this does is firm it up and make it spring better, because it traps the air better.
4. Baking
Then you need to score the bread. I’ve come down to pretty much one type - the classic score across the length.
Into the hot oven and cover with your Pyrex bowl, room temp, or Dutch Oven, upside down and preheated, to cover and trap the steam. I usually cook at 230C fan forced 40 minutes covered. Take off cover and put loaf on a wire rack back in the oven which you turn off, for 10 minutes, the a final ten minutes with the door cracked a bit. You turn our with a perfectly cooked loaf that’s crispy and yum.
Do NOT cut into the loaf until it’s fully cooled outside the oven on a wire rack. If you do you risk the inside being a bit sticky.
Summary of best secrets:
Don’t over prove
Refrigerate overnight
