Sourdough Bread

Big fan of crusty sourdough bread? If yes, then get ready for some serious baking and pastry arts work - in some way - comparable to what you may learn in fine culinary schools and/or professional baking and pastry classes. No worries, everything is discussed in details below, and the result is: artisan loaf - like, thick - chewy crust sourdough bread. Who knows...you may fell in love with this delightful bread, and decide to leave your local bakery and bake your own from now on! To get you started, here is what you need:

Ingredients For:

Yeast Starter:

Typical sourdough bread often depends on wild yeast instead of commercial one for bread leavening process. Wild yeast -naturally available in the air- are introduced to sourdough and cultivated within a warm, wet environment originally created by flour, water and other components. To capture wild yeast and speed up the leavening process, a small amount of bread dry yeast are added to sourdough starter. To create a starter , you need to mix in a relatively large bowl the following ingredients:
 

• 1 Cup of high-gluten bread flour (unbleached).
• 1/4 tsp of bread instant dry yeast.
• 1 Cup of warm water.

Cover bowl with a plastic wrap, and let double in size in a room temperature for 6 hours.

Sponge Dough:

Is a pre-ferment, damp mixture of yeast starter + warm water + additional bread flour. It serves as an incubation surroundings to cultivate yeast at a desired rate. It is eventually added to final sourdough. To create sponge dough, you need:
 

• 2 Cups of bread flour.
• 1 Cup of yeast starter.
• 3/4 Cup of warm water.

In a large bowl, mix above ingredients, cover, and let ferment till tripled in volume up to 8 hours at a room temperature. If you decide to let sponge ferment overnight, a cool place of 50 Degrees temperature will do. You can refrigerate it overnight as well - however - at 40 Degrees temperature, yeast would be inactive, yet healthy bacteria would be active still, and this activity tends to boost up sour flavor of the bread. Lower storage temperature tends to retard growth activities of yeast. If this happens, bring sponge to a room temperature, and let triple in volume before moving to next step.

Final Sourdough: is a combination of:
 

• 1 1/2 Cups of bread flour (you may use more or less depending on dough texture).
• 2 tsp of salt.
• Sponge dough.

Mix bread flour with salt and knead into sponge by hands till sourdough is smooth and elastic. Place in lightly oiled large bowl, cover and let double in size for 1 hour.

Forming Loaves/Baking Equipments:

-If you decide to bake bread in loaf pans, shape dough into 2 equal loaves, place in greased non-stick pans, and let comfortably rise for 30-40 minutes till puffy.
-If you decide to make one freestanding oval or round loaf (or 2 small loaves), place dough in a large bowl coated with clean piece of cotton cloth whose interior is lightly dusted with flour. Cover dough with a plastic wrap and let rise comfortably for 40 minutes.
 

Baking Directions:
 

-If you are baking in loaf pans, bake bread in a pre-heated oven of 350 F for 30 minutes or till done.

-If you are baking freestanding loaf/loaves and you want your sourdough bread to be crusty and chewy like artisan bread, follow the steps:

1. Place large old sheet pan in the lower shelf of an oven. Fill a spray bottle with water to increase and recharge steam inside oven. Heat oven to 425 F.
2. When sourdough is well risen, and oven is hot, pour 2-3 cups of hot water inside old sheet pan, and immediately close oven door to capture the steam. After few moments, open oven door and spray its walls with water to create more steam and close door immediately. Make sure to work through this step as quick as possible to maintain hot, steamy oven, necessary for baking crusty and chewy bread, similar to what you may find in an artisan bakery.
3. On a slightly greased baking sheet dusted with cornmeal, carefully invert dough, make few "1/4 inch deep" slits across top of dough and quickly put in hot oven before steam subsides. This will help steam to escape out of loaves, and thus expand properly while baking.
4. During first 15 minutes of bread baking, quickly and carefully spray oven walls with water to recharge steam (repeat 2-3 times).
5. After 15 minutes of bread baking have passed, reduce oven temperature to 375 F and bake for additional 30-40 minutes. Ten minutes toward the ends of baking time, check on the bread. If top is getting brown so quickly, lightly cover with aluminum foil to keep it from burning.
6. The bread is done when top is golden brown-dark golden brown and internal temperature of bread is 210 degrees.
7. When done, let cool on a wire rack, cut with serrated knife and serve.

Baker Note:

-Make sure your bread instant dry yeast is not expired so as to end up with satisfying results.

-In bread baking and pastry making, we often have recipes that call for use of salt and bread yeast, it is strongly recommended that salt and yeast are not combined together. Unlike sugar, salt has a retard affect on the growing activity of yeast, especially if the amount of salt used is not in-balance with the amount of bread yeast being used. In this particular recipe, salt is not added till the end. If it was added to the sponge, it would retard yeast growth, and thus affect bread leavening and baking process.

-Toward end of baking sourdough loaves, check bread internal temperature, using bread baking thermometer. It is very important that bread is well baked so as to drive moisture out of loaves. Otherwise, it will leak to the crust, and bread's texture will not be crusty nor chewy as you planned for.

-Follow proper safety and precaution measures while creating hot steamy oven for bread baking. Use hand mittens and turn head away while pouring hot water inside pan and/or spraying water inside oven so as to protect yourself from hot rising steam. Use old metal sheet pan for creating steamy oven. Don't use glass or ceramic pans because they may well shatter under high heat.