Friday, February 3, 2012

1, 2, 3, Sourdough!

Okay, you could remove that exclamation point if you like. I'm still going to keep it in my own head though, because I am just that (!) excited about my new pet. Despite adversity, this bread turned out to be the nicest loaf I've ever made without a bread machine. And I didn't knead it. Total hands-on time is probably 30 minutes or less, spread over 3 days. 

I used a simple 1, 2, 3 formula to calculate what I needed to make the dough. 1 =  weight of starter, 2 = '1' x 2 is the weight of flour, 3 = '1' x 3 is the weight of flour, and salt is about 2% of the flour weight. Confused? Let me simplify it for you.

Mix together 125g starter ("refresh" it with a feeding the day before you start this process), 250g water, 375g flour (I used whole white wheat), and 7g salt. 

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge. 8 hours later, fold it a few times every hour (ex. I mix my dough in the morning and in the evening, around 6 I fold the dough two- three times, put it back in the fridge, and repeat at 7 and 8 or 9). 8-12 hours later, shape your loaf (I put mine in loaf pans or you can do a free form loaf) and put it back in the fridge. 24 hours later, I take it out of the fridge, let it warm up for a few hours, then bake at 350 for an hour or til done.


It was fantastic warm, and it held up nicely under our burgers as well. The crumb was firm and the taste was lightly sour, but not so sour that Jack didn't like it. (He loved it!)

2 comments:

  1. Whew! That's a lot of Math!! I am very impressed with your use of grams!

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  2. Well, I used the kitchen scale for it all so it was very very easy. The nice thing is you could adapt it to whatever measurements you feel most comfortable with.

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