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May 2020: Simple Sourdough Recipe

Ashley Look

A simple sourdough recipe to get you in on the sourdough game.

This is a shout-out to all the new bakers that have embarked on the sourdough journey but feel defeated in effort. Hey there…I hear you. It’s a lot of flour feeding and discarding and questioning if the hobby is worth it or wasteful… Well, buck-up friend! If there’s one thing I can tell you about bread baking, it’s that the recipes themselves matter less than your relationship to the dough. Over time, you come to learn that a good bread is something you feel. You can tell long before it’s baked if it’s going to perform well and my advice to you is, just stay with it. Practice, make a mess, and enjoy the process regardless of result because you will get better with time. Breads take time… I’ve been baking for a while now and it’s the relationship I have created with time that makes bread such great company. And now, as we all sit idle in our quarantined quarters, where time escapes us and loneliness set in, it’s nice to have a friend, especially a nourishing one that provides a taste of companionship.

As for sourdough specifically, my fandom was born thanks to the pandemic and the sudden hunt for yeast. Albeit my yeast supply remains plentiful, I’m here for the herd. The thought of would-be-bakers being left behind due to yeast shortages was enough for me to join the sourdough bandwagon. I don’t care if it’s trendy because of the pandemic. The truth is, anything that enables you to provide for yourself reduces dependency at large. The fact that you can make your own bread means you don’t have to buy it from the grocery store, reducing demand on the supply chain which reduces the demand on factory workers which right now, are at the very heart of the virus outbreak. So, trendy or not, if you’re better able to shelter in place thanks to what might be a new hobby, by all means, go for it! Reducing your demand for market needs is one step closer to sustainability. Even thought it’s a small step, it’s still a step, and in times of crisis, little things matter.

So, don’t be discouraged by your bread flop, or shamed into thinking your’re just following a fad. Who cares? It’s fun. It’s therapeutic. And when you get the hang of it, it taste good! It’s a win for you, front-line workers, and the environment. Gawd… Just writing that feels like a sales pitch but honestly, this is not a hard sell. If bread baking is a coping mechanism for dark times then consider me an apocal-optimist cause I think its awesome!

As the sourdough starter ages, the holes get better and better!

Before I get into the recipe, I have to say one thing. Screw recipes! It’s so easy to get bogged down in how-to’s that quickly turn to overwhelm. That is how I have felt about all the sourdough recipes I’ve found so I’m giving up and going with what I know and chalking the failures up to learning along the way. I’m not getting into levain, or biga, or poolish and all the fancy names that boiled down, amount to “sponge” in my book. The semantics in bread making can leave a new baker confused, so let’s ignore that for now We’re keeping things simple. Ready?

Simple Sourdough Recipe

Step 1: Create the “sponge”

  • 1/4 cup starter
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 1 cup flour
  1. Mix sponge ingredients in a large bowl.
  2. Cover and let rest for 4 to 6 hours or when a small amout can float when placed in a bowl of water. This is known as a float test.

Step 2: Create the dough

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  1. Add the dough ingredients into the sponge bowl and combine.
  2. Mix until a shaggy dough forms and all ingredients are incorporated.
  3. Cover and let rest 6-8 hours or overnight.

Step 3: Knead the dough

  1. With a wet hand, reach along the inside edge of the bowl, lifting the dough up, so you can fold it onto itself.
  2. Do this this three or four times and then cover and let the dough rest in the bowl for 30ish minutes.
  3. Repeat Step 3, three more times.

Step 4: Shape the dough

  1. On a lightly floured surface, dump out your dough and gently shape into a round form being mindful of the gas bubbles.(You want to keep those intact as much as possible. That's what helps give the crumb those big sourdough holes.)
  2. Once it's shaped, place on a piece of parchment paper and place it in a clean bowl.
  3. Cover and let rise in the fridge overnight.

Step 5: Bake

  1. Remove bowl from fridge and let come to room temperature.
  2. Preheat a dutch oven in your oven to 500 degrees F.
  3. When the oven reaches tempurature, score the top of your bread dough with a few slits and carefuly place the dough with the parchment into the dutch oven.
  4. Cover it with the lid and place it back into the oven. Lower the tempurature to 450 degrees F and bake for 30 minutes.
  5. After 30 minutes, remove the lid, lower the tempurature to 400 degrees F and continue baking for 15 more minutes.
  6. Remove and let cool on a wire rack.

Hot damn! This is me trying to simplify things but my head is already hurting so not sure it worked.. Good luck and remember that the Sourdough Support Group is here for you! I’m posting my updates over on Instagram so if you want some behind the scenes shots check the sourdough stories. Don’t hesitate to message me with your successes, failure, questions or requests. I’m just as bored as you are so lets get gaming and have some fun. You have one month to complete this recipe mission. The next full moon is June 5, 2020 so you got four weeks to give this a shot. Good luck. You got this!

Piece out!