Sourdough bread for lazies
The sourdough and I have a love and hate relationship. I started working with sourdough because of/thanks to (I still can't decide which) my cousin Sinem. One of the reasons that I say "because of" is that all the recipes that I have seen were quite onerous. It is not odd that I find it so: almost all the recipes take at least 12 hours - not includig the time required for activating the sourdough. My husband started calling it "Sleepy Bread" because of my late night efforts to finish baking the bread. =) The second reason : This damned sourdough demands attention like a child. It dies if you don't feed it at least once a week, it repines if you put a metal spoon in it, etc. etc. We poor humans have found the solution by going to vacations with our sourdoughs or to entrust them to a friend to babysit.
However, it is priceless to have a warm bread right from the oven in the morning. And, you feel like an excited child, waiting for it to come out of the oven and wondering if it is crusty enough, if it feels spongy with big holes in it. Plus, it is quite cool to put a freshly baked bread to the table like the one in the picture above. Those who suffer from gastrointestinal problems will also notice that sourdough bread has a soothing quality for the stomach. So I can't get separated from my bread.
As I realised that sourdough bread will stay in my life for some time, I developed some shortcuts for baking it. I will first convey the recipe as it is for those who like to do stuff properly, then tell you how I do it my way:
Activating the sourdough:
When you get your sourdough out of the refrigirator, you will have to wait a short time until it reaches the room temperature. Then you can add flour and water and stir it with a silicone or wooden spoon. If you have 100 gr of sourdough, you should put 100 gr water and 100 gr flour. I prefer organic whole wheat flour. You will now have to wait until the sourdough doubles. You can mark the original level with a plastic band or a marker. You can understand that it is ready if it floats when you pour it into water.
In order to gain time, I feed it in the evening and start making the bread in the morning. Otherwise I find it tiresome waiting for it to activate. According to the below recipe, you will only need 100 gr of sourdough. So you can store the rest in the refrigirator for later use.
Ingredients:
100 gr sourdough
305 gr water (room temperature)
505 gr flour (you can mix several according to your preferences)
10 gr salt + 10 gr water
How to make it:
10:00 - Dissolve the sourdough in 305 gr of water. Add the flour and knead. Cover it with a cloth and wait 2 hours.
12:00 - Mix 10 gr salt and 10 gr water in a bowl, add it to the dough and knead. Cover it with a cloth and wait half an hour.
12:30 - Fold the dough
13:00 - 2. folding (If you want to add any extra ingredients such as walnuts etc. you should do it now.)
13:30 - 3. folding
14:00 - 4. folding
15:00 - 5. folding
16:00 - 6. folding
16:30 - Sprinkle flour on the counter, give shape to your dough making sure it is all covered with the flour. Cover it with a cloth and wait for half an hour.
17:00 - Put a clean cloth in a bowl and sprinkle some flour. Put the sough in the bowl and cover it with the cloth. Wait 4 hours. (I use corn flour, the color looks better when it is baked. And if you would like to put walnuts, etc. on the top, I recommend that you do it now, it sticks better.)
21:00 - Put the dough on a baking paper by turning it upside down and place it in a lidded cast iron baking pan. Shape the top of the bread with a knife. Bake it in a preheated oven at 220°C for 1 hour - 1 hour 5 minutes (you should not turn on the turbo). The lid must stay on for the first 30 - 35 minutes, then you can take it off for the rest of the time. You should put a bowl of water in the oven while preheating the oven and keep it there if you don't like the crust to be thick.
22:00 - Cool the bread on the counter for 1 hour.
Although the recipe is as above, the reality doesn't match the recipe. I sometimes forget to feed the sourdough in the evening, or I can't fold the dough in time as something comes up during the day or I simply miss the periods. The result: I am in the kitchen in the middle of the night, hands covered in dough.
The first thing that I noticed is that it is easier to make this bread with white flour. For example, rye flour is much harder to work with. And, something happens to the sourdough during summer time. You can bake better breads when the weather gets colder. So don't get demoralised if you experience small failures, it is not you, it's the sourdough!
The second thing, although the official recipe is like the above, according to my experiences, it is not the end of the world if you don't do all the foldings. I once had to bake it without doing any of the foldings and nobody understood the difference.
All the photos in this post are of the bread that I made with only 2 foldings and I omitted the half an hour resting on the counter. I think the result was quite successful and I can say that it tasted very delicious.
Also, I coincide the last stage, the four-hour resting period to the evening. That is to day, whenever I complete making the bread, I skip the last stage and bake it in the morning. In this way, you can have a nice and warm bread in the morning and get rid of the four-hour waiting period. And as I am quite impatient, I wait less than 1 hour after I take it out of the oven. If you cut it directly, the bread falls apart, however if you wait too long, it gets cold, and there goes all the magic for me.
Lastly, if you delight in indulgent breakfasts in the weekends like me, you may consider having a freshly baked bread both on saturday and sunday mornings. I prepare two measures of bread on fridays, and cook one measure on saturday and the other on sunday. After I complete all the stages apart from the baking process, I store the second measure of dough in the refrigerator on friday and take it out on saturday evening. In other words, the bread will complete its 4-hour resting period on saturday night and be ready to cook on sunday morning.
Enjoy!