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Oct 10, 2017 Overnight Sourdough Bread recipe is the perfect recipe to learn baking with a sourdough bread starter. The soft tender crumb has a slightly sour flavor surrounded by a beautiful crust. It’s an easy homemade bread. Remove amount of starter needed; bring to room temperature before using. For each 1/2 cup starter removed, add 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup warm water to the remaining starter and stir until smooth. Cover loosely and let stand in a warm place 1-2 days or until light and bubbly. Stir; cover tightly and refrigerate.To nourish starter:Remove.
Here’s how to make a good sourdough starter from scratch and how to keep it alive (feeding it). No added yeast. Sourdough bread baking instructions.
Sourdough Starter Recipe
3 tablespoons whole rye or wheat flour.
Enough water to make what looks like a “thick pancake batter.”
![Sourdough Bread Starter Sourdough Bread Starter](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125738342/352794658.jpg)
Stir to mix and let it sit out, loosely covered, for 24 hours.
Then take (1/4 cup) of the sourdough starter, discarding the rest, and mix it with (1/4 cup) of water and (3/8 cup) of flour.
Repeat this process every 12 hours for 4 to 6 days. By the time it’s obviously alive (slightly bubbly and smelling distinctly acidic) you’ll have succeeded in creating a levain.
You can jump straight to baking (from room temperature) in the section below with this the new starter or store in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake.
Prepare Sourdough Starter For Baking
Next, prepare your culture for baking:
From Refrigerated Starter
Start 24 hours ahead if you’re using a refrigerated starter. Why? Because you’ll need to wake it up and get it ready to leaven a loaf. Here’s how:
Mix (3/8 cup) flour, (1/4 cup) warm water, (1/8 cup) starter in a small bowl. Let sit at room temperature (~70 degrees F) for 12 to 14 hours.
From Room Temp Starter
Take (1 tablespoon) of the starter, which will have begun to get lively, and mix it with (1/2 cup) flour and (1/4 cup) water.
Let it sit for 12 to 14 more hours. Now you’ll have just enough lively sourdough starter for a loaf (a little more than a half cup) plus a bit left over to begin the next batch of starter.
Now, get that next sourdough starter batch going: Scoop out about (1/8 cup) of the starter, and add (1 1/3 tablespoons) of flour and (1 1/3 tablespoons) of water. Mix it, and let sit for 3 hours at room temperature. Then store in the fridge, covered tightly. Keep it alive by baking every week; or feed it once a week by scooping out (1/8 cup) of starter (discarding the rest), and mixing with (1 1/3 tablespoons) of flour and (1 1/3 tablespoons) of water, as above.
How To Bake Sourdough Bread
Now, finally, make the bread:
Sourdough Bread Ingredients
(4 cups) whole wheat flour
(2 1/4 cups) water, at room temperature
(2 1/2 teaspoons) salt
(1/2 cup) Sourdough Starter
(2 1/4 cups) water, at room temperature
(2 1/2 teaspoons) salt
(1/2 cup) Sourdough Starter
Step 1
This is known as the autolyse step. Mix the starter and water together in a large bowl or plastic bread-making tub. Add the flour, and mix well. Let sit 20 to 40 minutes.
Step 2
Mix dough by hand, squeezing and folding it to develop gluten.
Step 3
Let it rest, covered, for 3 hours, periodically folding as above (3 to 4 times).
Step 4
Shape the dough into a round by gently folding it over on itself, leaving a smooth, round top and a seamed bottom. This is known as a boule. Let it rest, covered, 20 minutes.
Step 5
Very gently place the boule, seam side up, into a floured proofing basket for 1.5 to 2 hours. If you do not have a proofing basket, you can take a linen (or fine mesh cotton, but linen is best) cloth, rub plenty of flour into it and place it in a small mixing bowl.
Sourdough Proofing Basket Kit
Make sure there is ample flour covering all surfaces that the dough will touch, and also be sure that the bowl is deep enough to really shore up the sides of the boule.
Step 6
About an hour into the proof, preheat the oven to 500 degrees and put the empty Dutch oven, with cover, into the oven, so that it will become blazing hot.
Very carefully, drop the boule into the hot Dutch oven, seam side down.
Make a few incisions along the top membrane about 1/4 inch into the dough’s surface, to help with the loaf expansion. I use a straight razor, a serrated knife works too.
Step 7
Bake approximately 30 minutes, then remove the lid of the Dutch oven and bake until the boule is a deep brown (10 to 15 minutes more). You can insert an instant-read thermometer into the loaf—when done, it will be within a few degrees of 212 F.
Step 8
Let cool on a metal rack—at least one hour; 4-6 hours is optimal to let the loaf develop flavor.
FEED THE SOURDOUGH STARTER
The starter keeps well in the fridge, feed it once a week or so by scooping out (1/8 cup) of starter (discarding the rest), and mixing with (1 1/3 tablespoons) of flour and (1 1/3 tablespoons) of water.
I make this whole wheat fresh ground. It is heavy. You can lighten it up some with store bought white flour. If you give it a nice warm place to rise and some time, whole wheat is fine.
There’s lot’s of ways to make sourdough. This one works and is pretty good.
The source of this sourdough starter recipe and instructions came from a MSB reader awhile ago. Thought I would format it and put it out there for your benefit.
Read more:THE Best Bread Machine For Bread Lover’s
Read more:How To Make Self Rising Flour & Biscuits Without Yeast
Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker’s Handbook
How does sourdough make things rise?
A packet of yeast makes dinner rolls rise. Sourdough starter performs that same function — but how? Wild yeast is in the air around us. It settles on kitchen work surfaces and in your ingredients, including flour. Add liquid to flour, and this wild yeast is activated and starts to produce carbon dioxide bubbles. This growing army of gas bubbles, effectively trapped by gluten within the dough, are what ultimately make sourdough bread rise.
Where does the sour flavor come from?
Sourdough bread's signature taste comes from friendly bacteria and yeast, which produce flavorful lactic and acetic acids in rising bread dough. These organic acids range from mellow to vinegary; controlling the balance of these acids, through adjusting ingredients and rising times in both starter and dough, let you create bread with your own favorite flavor profile.
Right or wrong way?
There are scores of self-proclaimed sourdough experts out there, each willing to share with you the 'secret' to sourdough. Problem is, these 'secrets' are often completely contradictory. Sourdough is an area of enormous controversy, as well as firmly held ignorance.
'Scientific' bakers hold that sourdough bread can't be made without a thorough understanding of the symbiotic chemical relationship between yeast and lactobacilli. At the same time, people made bread with wild yeast for millennia — so how complicated could it be?
We know that yeast and lactobacilli leaven and flavor sourdough bread. We also know that temperature and hydration (the liquid/flour ratio) are important. But bakers' intuition is as essential to sourdough success as pure science. We see the same flour/water combination behaving differently from one time of year to another (or even from day to day); and it's as much experience as science that teaches us what's going on, and how to adapt.
So look at everything you read about sourdough as simply one approach. There are as many ways to create, nurture, and bake with a starter as there are bakers in the world. The information you read here works well for us, and we've shared our expertise with hundreds of thousands of satisfied bakers. But the 'right' way to bake with sourdough is whatever works best for YOU.
![Sourdough Bread Starter Sourdough Bread Starter](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125738342/999894255.jpg)
Traditions & history
Grape juice, wine, beer, and wheat flour porridge (left to go sour) were leavening regulars in the ancient world. As early as 4,000 BC, Egyptian writings mention making bread with these 'sours.' Legend has it that a crock of starter made its way to the New World in the hold of Columbus' ship; and by the mid-19th century, starters were vital to both American prospectors and pioneers.
By 1849 sourdough had gained fame nationwide, driven by its popularity with California gold prospectors. Alaskan Klondike miners used fermented dough, hung in a tin above the stove, to make bread, biscuits, and flapjacks. A more liquid starter, called 'sponge,' was carefully tended by many a pioneer family as they traveled west in their prairie schooners.
Starters fed many families well, and were passed from friend to friend and generation to generation. Long after the advent of packaged yeast, sourdough baking has continued to thrive. Sourdough, with its unique flavor, has gathered a legion of aficionados — bakers who revel in the mystique of the starter, and who continue to feed family and friends with this ancient ingredient every day.
Next: Create
Every sourdough baker's goal is a delicious loaf of crusty bread. First step: building your starter, the foundation of all of your future sourdough baking.
Start Here