Sourdough Bread

I've been making bread for several months, and toying with that recipe. The family loves it, and it is quite good.

2 cups bread flour
1 cup water 120 degrees
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Mix and cover, let rise for one hr. Grease and flour baking dish, add dough mixture with a splash of olive oil. That's the basic, but at this step I add a generous portion of Italian seasoning to the mixture, and once I place it in the baking dish, I sprinkle Italian seasoning all over the top.

Cover and let rise once again for an HR, and then
Bake at 375 for 40 minutes.

It makes a really good Italian bread loaf, especially if you have some olive oil/seasoning to dip it in.

The recipe I provided above goes into the autolyze, proper mixing, stretching and folding, as well as shaping of a boule, baking in a Dutch oven, etc.

I'm sure your bread is great, but this would be a much more technical recipe. I also would recommend you bake by weight of ingredients rather than volume.

Getting these techniques down before you enter the sourdough realm I beleive is an important and less frustrating way to start.
Going straight to sourdough, there are so many more variables.

Sour Dough Bread Recipe

Starter mix to feed jar before baking and once a week to keep alive.
3 TBS Potato Flakes (Instant)
½ Cup Sugar (white)
1 TBS Flour (AP or Bread)
1 Cup Warm Water (105 degrees)

For Bread:
6 Cups Flour (AP or Bread)
1 TBS Salt
¾ Cup Sugar
½ Cup Corn Oil
1 ½ Cups Warm Water
1 Cup Starter
Instructions:
• Mix dry ingredients in large bowl
• Let starter come to room temperature.
• Add Wet ingredients
• Knead Dough, Cover
• Let rest for 12 hours (Proof). (warm place)
• Separate into thirds and place in buttered loaf pan.
• Let Rise in loaf pans until filled pan- double or triple in size.
• Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for approximately 30 minutes.

Thank you for the information, and suggestions.
It's very much appreciated, and from everyone else as well

The King Arthur starter is a good one to use if you want to make from scratch or you can just order the starter from them already to go. Just start feeding. It’s cheap.

If you are in Baton Rouge I’ll give you some of mine.

If you want to bake sourdough buy one book. Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. Learn his country bread recipe and practice until you get it right. Then you have a base sourdough recipe you can use for different breads. It’s easier to have one recipe that you can adapt rather than try to master a bunch of different ones that in the end can be made from your base. You know how it acts and knowing that gives you confidence to bake. It’s a challenge and using levain is a different game but not one that is hard.

The biggest obstacle you will find-or at least for me, is timing. I bake a lot of bread and I still scramble to get it done when I want it. I’m getting much better but there was a few times the dough wasn’t waiting to proof overnight and I baked at midnight.

When you pull a loaf out of the oven your first thought is cut open and smear butter and eat. Eat the whole loaf standing at the counter with a stick of soft butter and hot bread.

I had to go to bread rehab to make me stop that. As much as your starter being healthy and ripe means to good bread allowing it to cool does as well. Especially on your first dozen loaves while you get the feel for it. 9 out of 10 cut without cooling is gummy. Think of it as resting a piece of meat. Let the carryover heat finish cooking it so the water gets out.

Use King Arthur bread flour to start. It’s very forgiving and high in protein. It can accept a large hydration. Once you get that you can add others. Tartine uses 90% bread or strong flour and 10% whole wheat. It’s a great formula.

No need to feed your starter daily unless you are baking daily. Also no need to have large amounts of starter. You can scale up as you need. This will save you a lot of flour and mess. If I’m baking on the weekend (which I normally do) I set my starter out on the counter on Thursday night, feed Friday morning and feed again Friday night. This will keep it ripe and robust and if it peaks too early in the morning on Saturday I can refresh it and it will be ready in 3-4 hours.

True sourdough is three ingredients. Flour, salt, water. That’s it. And man you can do a thousand different loaves with those three ingredients.

Tartine Bread is a bible. I have quite a few books and all are good for something, a tip, a different flavor or something but Tartine is your textbook. You can find his recipe all over out there. It’s the gold standard that is being used.

The guy that owns Proof Bread has a good YouTube channel. Long videos but really good. The Perfect Loaf mentioned above is a good source as is Pantry Mama. King Arthur has some good recipes for yeast bread’s although I struggled with their sourdough.

Good luck and post some pictures. It’s a great craft.

Some I baked last weekend.

quote:

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Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson

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Is this better than Flour Water Salt Yeast by Forkish?

Bread looks amazing. My problem is what to do with all this bread? One can only eat so much and giveaway so much!

Does a mature, established culture make a noticeable difference in final product?

I mostly make sourdough sandwich bread that doesn’t require as much oversight as traditional sourdough (which I have also made). I would go this route as a beginner just to get comfortable. It’s very easy to do, especially if you have a mixer that can handle the dough.

Get a strong, healthy starter from someone (mine is from someone popular on Instagram and is very healthy). Don’t bother starting one yourself.

You can also find recipes for adding discard into regular yeasted bread which would be an easy way to get started with sourdough. I haven’t tried this myself but this one explains the process
Sourdough discard bread

There are some great sourdough groups on Facebook and great Instagram Influencers who also have step by step videos and lots of tips. I can list some if you’re interested.