Easy home made sourdough

The lost art of bread making has been making something of a revival for the last decade or so. The movement goes beyond those trendiest of appliances, the electric bread maker. We now see bread making courses popping up alongside other artisanal classes including fermenting, pickling and brewing. The beauty I see in it is how simple bread making can be, and how delicious the results.

It’s fairly easy to make a sourdough starter from scratch, as we did many years ago. But over time life became full and we had less time to bake fresh bread. A few months ago a kind neighbour gifted us a portion of their starter and we’ve been regularly baking sourdough ever since.

To keep the sourdough starter healthy we mix equal parts of starter, plain flour and water together and leave covered for anywhere from 12- 24 hours. When it’s nice and bubbly, it is ready to use.

To make our tiny farm sourdough, we mix:

• 200g active starter
• 200g water
• 1 tsp salt
• 325g flour

In the above picture I used 100g rye flour as part of the 325g total flour. But for beginners, it’s best to use plain flour as the rye slows the rising process and can be trickier to use. (If you do want to use part rye, you need to play with the rising times. For example, increase the resting period to 14-16 hours before baking.)

Once mixed together – which is literally just a minute or two of stirring – loosely cover with a plate or tea towel and set aside for around 12 hours. You can also use a bread maker to mix the dough at the start as long as you turn it off when the dough cycle has ended. I’ve found absolutely no difference between using the bread maker and mixing quickly by hand. (Don’t be tempted to cook the dough in the bread maker though – that has always led to sad faces and misery on tiny farm.)

When you next peek at your dough, it will have risen nicely and be full of glorious air bubbles. You can see how much bigger the dough looks after it has rested in the picture below.

The next step is to turn the dough out onto a floured surface.

Then, with floured hands, fold the edges in towards the centre of the dough, one part at a time.

Turn the dough gently while folding the edges in until you’ve been twice around the dough folding as you go.

Finally, flip the dough over so that the rough folded sides are now underneath the dough and loosely shape it to the form of the dish you will be baking in.

At this point, I leave the dough on the bench to rest for around 30 minutes.

You’ll need to put the dish you are planning to cook the dough in into the oven before you turn it on. Ideally you’ll have a crockpot or similar with a lid but I’ve also had great results with a bread tin and a piece of foil over the top. The oven should be hot, at around 230 – 250 degrees celsius.

When you are ready to bake, take the hot dish out of the oven and flip your dough upside down into the dish so the folded side is now on top. This will give you a lovely crust when it bakes. Pop the lid back on and into the oven for 30 minutes.

When the timer goes off, take the lid off and turn the temperature down to 200 – 210 degrees for another 15 minutes. Before you know it you will be salivating at the amazing aromas of freshly baked sourdough emanating from your oven.

Once the bread is cooked, whip it out of the dish and onto a rack to cool. Best if you can wait at least 30 minutes before slicing into it but it almost never lasts that long on our tiny farm…

Enjoy!!

The inspiration for this sourdough recipe comes from a very old blog about no-knead sourdough at https://thestonesoup.com. Overtime I’ve changed the quantities to suit my starter better but the no-knead method is simply wonderful. Thank you stone soup!