It's Them Sourdough Buns...
You can follow along with me in our cooking tutorial video How to Feed & Bake Sourdough Bread.
We love sourdough bread and for years would go to Whole Paycheck Foods – oops, I mean Whole Foods – to buy their San Francisco Sourdough. I was chatting with some of my in-person clients and mentioned how much we liked it and how I would love to learn to keep starter and make sourdough bread of my own. Lo and behold, a client came in with a freshly baked loaf and a jar of my very own sourdough starter! (Thank you, Susie!)
I tend to shy away from anything new, especially if I feel I might not be great at it (imagine that) so I was pretty intimidated at first. I didn’t have the first clue and was baffled by cryptic terms like “feeding” the starter.
Feed it?
How in the world do you feed a lump of goo?
Susie took pity on me and explained it wasn’t as mysterious as it sounded. Still, I was scared I would ruin it so, of course, I shoved it in the fridge and put it off until the last minute. Henry made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal and finally shamed me into giving it a try.
I plowed through all the research and finally determined the general population wasn’t in any danger and I probably wasn’t going to kill anyone so I decided to give it a shot.
All of this to say it turned out just fine.
Not only did we survive it was really good!
We keep the starter in the fridge and do nothing more than feed it once a week and make some sort of bread with it. It might be a traditional loaf, a pie crust, dinner rolls, crescent rolls, garlic knots or whatever one of us wants to try.
Seriously, you can’t mess it up! (It’s made just for me!)
I don’t want anyone to feel they can’t make a great loaf of sourdough because if I can do it anyone can! It’s simple and whatever we make turns out great each time.
It may not be perfect but it’s always delicious!
The recipe below requires sourdough starter you’re feeding on a regular basis. (You can buy starter from various stores or online at kingarthurbaking.com.)
I'll teach you how to feed the sourdough starter for future use and bake a fresh loaf of bread for immediate enjoyment. I make Dutch oven bread but you can do it in regular bread pans, on a stone or try anything that strikes your fancy. I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve put together and hearing what you’ve come up with.
You can follow along with our tutorial video How to Feed & Bake Sourdough Bread.
You’ll need the starter, bread flour, salt, water, active dry yeast, a food scale, measuring cups, two large bowls and various mixing items like a dough whisk and a hard rubber spatula plus a cast iron Dutch oven for cooking the boule. (A Silpat for the bottom of the Dutch oven is one of the best purchases you can make.)
Split the starter into two bowls. One will be fed for future use and the other will be used immediately in a loaf of bread.
113 grams sourdough starter
113 grams bread flour
½ cup filtered water
Measure the ingredients into one of the bowls and mix together with the dough whisk. Cover and allow the fed starter to rise for 2 hours. Repeat this for the second bowl. One will be stored for next time and one will be turned into a loaf of sourdough bread.
Scrape the contents of one bowl into a jar and store for future use. Starter that’s stored in the refrigerator needs to be fed weekly while starters stored at room temperature require daily feeding.
Add the following ingredients to the second bowl of fed starter for a loaf of fresh sourdough bread.
600 grams bread flour
15 grams salt
2 tsp. active dry yeast
340 grams water (~1½ cups)
Add the above ingredients into the second bowl and mix well with the dough whisk. Cover and allow the dough to rise for 2 hours.
Preheat the oven and the Dutch oven, along with the lid, to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place some flour on a sheet of parchment paper and scrape the dough from the bowl onto the paper. Cover your hands with flour, knead the dough several times and then form it into a ball.
Place the ball of dough onto the Silpat and score the top with a razor blade. (This will keep it from cracking randomly. Feel free to try any design you like!)
Bake the loaf in the covered, pre-heated Dutch oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes.
Remove the lid and cook an additional 10 minutes.
Use the Silpat to pull the bread out of the Dutch oven and slide it onto a cooling rack.
Cool for 1-2 hours.
Slice the bread, sit back and enjoy!
Regards,
Eva
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