Sourdough Bread

I don't have any sourdough on the go at the moment which is pretty shameful for a homemade bread fanatic and a foodie. So I've decided to start my own wild yeast sourdough. The beauty of sourdough is that it tastes slightly different wherever you make it as it's flavoured by the wild yeasts from that area. That, and it's like doing a science experiment! Probably the most important thing before you begin something like this is to plan your schedule. For example, if you plan to leave something for 12 hours you don’t want to be tending to it at 1:00pm. I worked my timings around my working week.

I've mixed 25g Plain Flour with a little lukewarm boiled water into a wet dough, covered it with a damp tea towel and left it to gather some yeasts. I've actually left it on the windowsill in our bedroom as this doesn't get direct sun so won't dry out the dough and we have the window open most of the day and night. It also overlooks our back garden and fields behind that so it's the best place I can think of for gathering wild yeasts.

After 3 days I check to see how we'd done. The outside of the dough has hardened into a crusty shell, but inside the mixture is gooey and sticky. The best way to describe it is like a ripe, runny cheese texture. Most importantly it smells like sourdough!

It's time to give it its first refresher. I scoop out the "shell" and transfer the starter to a clean bowl. I mix it up in 1 tbsp milk and 2 tbsp warm water before gradually incorporating about 60g plain flour. After giving my container a thorough clean out I place the very wet dough back in.

I leave it back on the windowsill for 1 day this time, again covered with a damp tea towel, after which it hasn't had time to crust over but has developed a skin which I peel off and discard.

Time for the second refresher and to bulk it out a bit. I add 6tbsp warm water mixed with 2 tbsp milk and stir the starter up into a batter, then I add 200g plain flour. I re-cover it with the damp towel and this time leave it high up in the kitchen, where it’s a bit warmer, for 12 hours.

And there we have a sourdough starter. I must admit it’s not looking quite as active as I'd hoped but I've made a schedule and I'll stick to it now. From here on I'm practicing the process for making bread using my starter. This will be important for me to note because I'm only going to achieve regular breads by getting into a routine of doing this once a week or so.

So, I remove 200g of the starter to a separate bowl, add 100ml warm water and weigh out 200g white bread flour.

I stir the starter into the water, make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the starter. I flick some of the surrounding flour over the starter and leave in a warm place to sponge.

While that’s doing it's thing I need to replenish the starter I've just removed, so I add another 6 tbsp warm water and 2 tbsp milk, mix it into the starter and feed it with 175g plain flour again. This time I cover it with cling film and place it back in it's high up spot. I don’t want it to dry out, but I want to give the yeast a chance to multiply in the mixture.

I come back to my sponged mixture and mix it up into a wet dough. This I cover with the tea towel and place high up next to the starter for 8 hours. After that I'll decide whether or not it needs a little longer for the yeasts to really get going.

It doesn't look too bad, I think we can work with this. From here on I'm handling this with kid gloves and I'm gonna make sure I get this right. I'm on my 5th day of making this bread and I'd quite like it to work.

I add 100ml of warm water and mix it up into the dough to make a paste, then add 25g of Rye Flour and 1 tsp of sugar.

Then I sieved in 75g White Bread Flour and mixed that in. Finally I sieved another 50g White Bread Flour and 1 1/2 tsp of salt together and mixed it up into a moist dough. I dumped probably about another 50g of White Bread Flour onto the worktop and worked my dough on this until it was all incorporated and gave me a smooth, elastic and handleable dough.

I washed up my bowl and thoroughly dried it before oiling it and putting the dough back in to prove covered with cling film. I checked on it after an hour. Judging by the way it had re-shaped in the bowl I decided it probably needed firming a little so again I floured the work surface and worked a bit more flour in. This time I plumped the dough up into a cushion and left it on a floured baking tray covered with the oiled bowl to second prove for 1 1/2 hours.

After that it was looking good! I pre-heated my oven to 220 degC, dusted flour over the top of the bread, slashed it and put it in for 20-25 minutes. I splashed water around the inside of the oven 3 times in the first 5 minutes of baking. After just over 20 minutes I turned down to 190 degC and baked for a further 10-12 minutes. When it came out... success!

My very own unique sourdough bread. Big shout out to my back garden for supplying the yeast to make it!

The last thing I did at the end of the day was take my tub of starter, that by now had been feasting on it's refresher for about 14 hours and was looking text book happy, and moved it into the fridge. That'll slow it down and it'll be ready for use in my next bread when I want it.