Ingredients
Flour 100%
Sponge 66%
Salt 2%
Water 35%
2 Cups of sponge (proved starter)
3 Cups of unbleached or baking flour
2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 cup of water
For example, if you are using 1000 grams of flour, then you will need 20 grams of salt and 660 grams of sponge.
If you don’t want to calculate the percentage, here is another recipe for a normal size loaf.
Flour, Sponge (or yeast), salt, water is all you need to make good healthy sourdough bread. If you want more flavour in your bread you can add some sugar or oil in it. If you have a mixer, just mix all the ingredients together, but if you don’t have one that’s fine. Add all the ingredients into a big bowl and mix them together by hand and knead them together until they’re all mixed together. The recipe I’m showing you here is just an approximate, try feeling the dough and see if it is too sticky. If it is, then add flour. If it is too dry, then add a little bit of water. It is hard to judge if this is your first time making sourdough bread, don’t worry because the dough will still turn out fine, but just won’t look as nice. Practice a few more times and you will be good at it. Practice makes perfect, right?
Resting
When your dough is all mixed in, let it rest for a couple of minutes, then round your dough into a ball shape. Add some flour to the dough if it is very sticky, place it in a warm place and cover it with a towel. It will take longer to prove because it is not yeast bread (around 1-2 hours). Check it once a while because it might build up a layer on the surface if it is too dry, in that case, just spray water on it and cover it up again. To know if the dough is ready, gently poke the dough and see if it springs back. If it is not ready, the dough will bounce back and heal up; if it is ready, it will only spring back a little and the hole will remain there. We call this resting the dough.
Proving/proofing
Once your dough is ready we can start moulding it. Generally, there are two shapes you can make: a round shape and a long shape. A round shape will look better but the long shape will be easier to slice. First we have to push the dough down to squeeze all the gas out, fold it in half and then round it in into a ball shape or a cylinder shape. Be careful not to over round it because the dough will start absorbing heat from your hand, then it will stick to your hand and the dough will tear instead of having a beautiful skin. Once you finish moulding it, place it in a warm place with a paper towel on it instead of towel, because a towel will be too heavy for proving. Then put it on a greased baking sheet to prove the second time. This will take longer than resting, probably at least two hours. You want to have it proving up to almost double the size, because if it’s proved enough then the bread will turn out really hard; if it over proves the bread will collapse.
Baking
Once your dough is proved, be very gentle with it because it will become very soft inside, any strong movement might make the dough collapse. Now we need to cut a few lines along the surface of the dough (around 1 cm deep) to let the air come out and have a better size during baking. You can do 3 – 5 cuts depending on how you want it look like. Now we can put it in the oven. Remember, always preheat the oven to a point which is higher than 40oF or 20oC. If you are baking it at 400oF(205oC), then preheat it to 440oF (225oC). I usually bake it at 400oF for 35 – 40 minutes with my oven. However, every oven is a little bit different so play around with your oven and bake it for 30 minutes first, take a look and you can adjust the time until your dough appears to have a golden colour. If the top of the bread is getting dark but the sides are still pal
e, that means your oven is too hot. Turn down the temperature by 10oF – 20oF and bake it for a few more minutes. When your sourdough bread is ready, take it out and put it on a cooling rack or a plate. There, your bread is done and you can eat it right away! But be careful, it is still really hot. If you want to slice the bread, let it cool down for at least 30-60 minutes because it will be too hot and soft to cut. It will become a mess if you try to slice it when it too soft.
You can also use this sourdough bread recipe for whole wheat sourdough, sourdough cinnamon rolls, sourdough pancakes, sourdough rolls, sourdough sticks, sourdough pizza etc.