Made a sourdough starter during the pandemic. Just like so many others. Ours is still going and produces our goto house bread. The bread machine does the initial heavy lifting. This recipe is for about a 70% hydration bread that's about 45% whole wheat. The sourdough starter is half whole wheat flour, so an additional 50 g of whole wheat added to the initial 200 g.
Into the bread machine bucket put:
- 200 g of Whole Wheat flour
- 300 g of All Purpose flour, unbleached. Organic preferred, if bought in bulk from Costco.
- 10 g salt
- 330 g of water*
- 100 g of sourdough starter
Set the bread machine to the dough option and run. When that cycle completes, the dough is pulled out and put into a gallon plastic drink pitcher until it doubles in volume. Usually takes overnight.
Once it doubles, it comes out of the pitcher and folded every 15 min 3 X. Then it's shaped and put into a banneton, covered with one of those shower cap-like plastic covers, until it doubles again.
To cook,
- A dutch oven is put on the middle rack in the oven which is initially set to 500 F.
- The dough is rolled out of the banneton and onto parchment paper that's been sprinkled with a bit of corn meal.
- The dough is scored and then the dough/parchment is slid into the dutch oven and the lid closed.
- Oven temperature immediately reduced to 450 F and the dough is cooked at that temperature for 25 min with the dutch oven lid closed.
- After 25 min, the lid to the dutch oven is removed and the bread cooked an additional 20 min, uncovered.
When done, the dutch oven is removed from the oven, the bread is rolled out onto a rack and cooled for at least an hour, preferably until completely cooled.
*Whey may be substituted for the water if there is some available from making Greek Yogurt. Here, there usually is. It will increase the nutrient value but will give a stiffer dough that doesn't spring as much in the oven. So increase the liquid to 350 g. Often takes longer to double, too. But it's another good use for whey while increasing the nutritional value of the bread.
