Bake your first Sourdough

It's time to bake your first sourdough! Whether it be with your own starter or one from a friend / aquintance - getting to the point where you can actually bake with it, is so exciting!

What you'll need:

• Glass / plastic mixing bowl (stainless steel can sometime be to cold)

• Cast Iron Pot / Bread Pan

• Proofing baskets (example: https://www.takealot.com/get-unboxed-9-inch-2-piece-round-sourdough-proofing-basket-bread/PLID95887933)

• Baking Paper

• Sharp knive / Bread scoring tool (example: https://www.takealot.com/1000ml-sourdough-starter-jar-kit-reusable-bread-baking-supplies/PLID95396185)

• Metal Bench Scraper

• Dish cloths

Ingredients:

For Super Starter:

• 150g Active Starter

• 150g Flour

• 150g Water (filtered, room temperature)

For Baking:

• 250g Active Starter (from your Super Starter)

• 700g Water (filtered, room temperature)

• 1kg Flour (white bread flour is considered to be the easiest option for beginners, but you can use whatever you'd like)

• 15g Salt

PS: these ingredients are enough for two loaves. Baking sourdough is quite time consuming so you might just as well make two loaves per batch! You can always freeze one of them.

Baking sourdough is a 2-day process; 1 day to prep & 1 day to bake.

For prep day, I would recommend that you pick a day that you are at home from 14:00-20:00.

Day 1: Prep Day

(Ajdust & adapt times to suit your schedule)

07:00 Create Super Starter

• Take 150g from your starter and add it to a glass / plastic bowl (stainless steel might sometimes be too cold). Add 150g flour and 150g room temperature water. Mix and cover with dish cloth and allow to stand on counter. This new batch is called your Super Starter. [Creating a Super Starter simply ensures that you don't deplete your original / base starter every time you bake.]

• Feed your base starter (the one you extracted 150g from) with 50g flour + 50g water.

14:00 Baking Prep

• Take 250g from your Super Starter + add 700g water. Stir until it becomes foamy.

• Add 1kg flour and mix until there are no dry flour lumps left.

• Cover bowl with WET dish cloth and allow to rest on counter for 40min.

14:45

• Add 20g Salt and incorporate salt using Pincer Method (video below).

• After incorporating salt, perform Slap & Folds (video below) until dough texture becomes smoother. Reason for slap against counter is to stick it so that you can pull and stretch it before you fold it. It creates air in the dough (we want that). Slap and folds takes about 10min, it usually look likes it takes a turn for the worse before it becomes smoother in texture.

• Cover dough with DRY dish cloth and allow dough to rest on counter for 30 minutes.

15:30

• Perform a few Coil Folds (video below), cover with dish cloth and allow to rest 30 minutes on counter. [During winter times you might want to wait 40 minutes between folds.]

16:00

• Perform a few coil folds, cover with dish cloth and allow to rest 30 minutes on counter.

16:30

• Perform a few coil folds, cover with dish cloth and allow to rest 30 minutes on counter.

17:00

• Perform a few coil folds, cover with dish cloth and allow to rest 60-120 minutes on counter.

19:00

• On a clean counter, sprinkle some flour. On lightly flour dusted counter, split your dough in two using a metal bench scraper.

• Create tension in the dough by tucking the edges of the dough underneath the dough and towards you. The idea is to create a smooth top surface.

• Allow to rest for 20 minutes under dish cloth on counter.

19:30

• Lightly dust bannetons (proofing baskets) with flour. You can also use a normal bread pan if you don't have proofing baskets. Add a dish cloth to the breadpan and lightly dust with flour to ensure that the dough won't get stuck in bread pan.

• Place dough in bannetons - smooth side facing down.

• Cover with dish cloth and place in fridge to ferment over night.

Day 2: Baking Day

The hardest part is over! Today you simply bake your bread and enjoy that first fresh slice! Yum!

• Preheat oven to 230 degrees Celcius WITH your cast iron pot and it's lid. If you don't have a cast iron pot, you can also use another bread pan.

• Remove bannetons / proofing baskets from fridge and tum out onto baking paper on counter. Smooth side that was facing down towards basket is now facing up.

• Score your dough with bread scoring tool or sharp knife. An "X" always looks nice on a round bread, but really there are no rules!

• Lift baking paper with dough and place into cast iron pot.

• Bake for 30 minutes with lid on 180 degrees Celcius. If you are using a bread pan, add 10 ice cubes on the oven tray below the bread pan - it will create the steam like a cast iron pot would have.

• Remove lid and bake for 25-30 minutes / until baked thoroughly.

• Remove bread from oven and place on cooling rack.

• Allow bread to cool down completely before cutting into it.