The simple SECRET for perfect sourdough with Richard Bertinet | Meet your Maestro | BBC Maestro

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Richard Bertinet shares his go-to secret for making perfect sourdough; simple, reliable, and rooted in years of hands-on baking experience.

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so now it’s time to make sourdough my ferment is prime ready got flour bit of spelt bit of malt my salt and water that’s all you need to make soo very simple the first thing I’ll do is put my bowl on my scales press zero and I’ll put my ferment in there water on the top and then the rest of the ingredients so I need 400 g of ferment for this oh smell delicious it’s 390 again if you have 10 15 g extra don’t worry about it it’s absolutely fine move this out of the way so carrot is in here and put the water over the top for my spelled flour and the more powder keep the salt aside we will put the salt halfway through mixing and then add strong bud flour in here [Music] then we put the board on the hook so my water was cool water not hot not warm just cool and the mixer goes on slow speed i’m going to mix the whole sourdough on the same speed i don’t too much air into it i want it to be nice and light but not I don’t want to work it too hard in the mixer so what I’m doing there is mix everything together when it’s all nice and together in about 5 6 minutes we add the salt and about five 6 minutes later the dough should be all together and we finish it off by hand we’re good so again what we’re going to learn now is you can’t put that sticky dough into a bowl just like we need to give it a bit of shape and strength so take my dough hook off look at this beauty it’s like an octopus so you can see the dough there feels sticky but look at the magic of this technique a few flick and already your dough get a nice shape less sticky so walk it a bit i skim the dough on the table so I spin it around if I go this way on the top and if I go this way I go under and walk it out but look at this so my top stays on top my top now doesn’t stick underneath is a bit more sticky so it’s control that control your dough so this way move your legs walk with your dough it’s giving you that control all the time so now we’re going to res the dough i’m going to put a tiny bit of You can use white flowers a bit of spelt very fine dusting spin the door over here we go look at this how beautiful that door is it’s alive look at the pocket so now the dough is good to rest we’ll leave it rest for an hour an hour and a half i see what it’s like and then it will start to puff up it will start to rise and then we’re going to give the dough a turn i will explain that to you on the same time beautiful so I’ll give that dough another hour and again you can see there’s more fermentation going in so we’re going to give another turn to that dough same again as what we did t bit of flour stick the scraper on the side and turn it over itself so we never lose your top fine dust in the flour look at this beautiful and then tuck the dough in with your pepper all the way down turn the dough over itself flip it okay last fold tuck it in that’s ready 45 minutes 1 hour now and then we divide it and I’ll show to shape also right now it’s time to make our sourdough what I mean by that we’re going to divide the dough pre-shape it flour a basket shape the dough and put it into the basket so let’s get on with it look at this now our dough nice and strong i’m going to flour the table a little bit t the dough in turn the dough over bit of flour use my scraper i got a tiny bit of flour there so it doesn’t stick to my hand look at this beautiful go around the bowl and remember our top we’re going to keep our top the top of our s will be the same top of this so tip the door over like so and then I’m just going to dig out the door slightly and give you a to fold like that so my top is reappearing in here and for this one over the top look at this how exciting is this i’m always excited about bubbles amazing turn it over so I know the size I want i’m going to show you which basket we’re going to do we’re going to do the classic sour dough in basket and then the long shape version but I’ll show to flour them in a minute so that’s about take 1.2 kilo of dough and this one about just 600 so I’m going to weigh the small one [Applause] first so to divide the dough remember my top is in here i’m going use my scraper my left hand is like a scale so I know about 600 g what it should be it’s roughly just in here so I’m going to go there and squeeze that dough in you can see the sticky side in there so try not to put your finger in there just leave it there use your scraper to move the dough tuck it all in on the scale 600 perfect and then this one should just be the right weight too 1.2 exactly here we go so there are two shaping here you don’t want to be too harsh with it just leave them like that what I’m going to do now is to bench rest it we call it it’s just a a very very simple shaping that just tuck it in bit of flour on the leaf and then leave it leave them rest that’s all you need to do just there gentle tuck is there look at this beautiful dough go to our basket when you shape your sourdough or any dough to go into basket you need to have a nice tension of your dough so the smooth side doesn’t stick to the basket enough flour but not too much also so the way I do it I’m going to use a bit of spel flour in here go around from the center and go round and round and round like that so I got a little bit of flour everywhere not big lumps stuck everywhere just that and that’s enough if you do it shape properly you won’t stick to the basket for the long one same start there and go around so when the dough is shaped we put it in the basket then we will let them rise and prove for about 3 or 4 hours ambient so my dough has been resting for a good 10 minutes now i’m ready to shape the dough so I’m going take my time and show you how to shape there’s two different um the bool traditional bool and the long batter we call it so let’s start with the B in here always move the D with your scraper little flour my top is in here i want my top to be under to prove the dough overnight travel little flour underneath and then we’re going to fold the dough over my thumb there and bring all the corner in just there bring all the sticky side together then close everything down like so so my top is in here and I put it down into my basket and my seam is there for the long one little flour again with my scrapper top turn upside down my seam is there and this I’m going to do a very simple shaping like that take the corner fold them in like so press in the middle in my spine fold this over the top turn it around and do the same this side there and this over press in the middle so everything is there seal the two edge together you can hear the air clacking gentle gather together she’s just seal and my top is back on top now the flour lift into the basket so our shape B in here and our butter shape in here put my brush so got some seam in here just a tiny tiny bit not too much so it will slide the dough nice and easy so start with the B so don’t drop them just put your hand there like a buffer and then turn it over like that do it doesn’t stick give it a gentle rub so the excess flour fall over beautiful can use a brush take the excess all the flour on the peel will burn in your oven so take the excess off so I’m going to show you two very simple cut one is a continuous round like that another one little flicks all over the place so the first one I use my fingers as a guide in here my blades like like this i’m going to go around in here and use a corner of that blade in here at 45°ree angle like that so get that skin coming up all the way not like so just angle down and then in a continuous manners just cut move your legs all the way down this one I’m going to cut all the way down in here turn the blade the other way bit more skill this way and turn the blade again this way and finish this way so let’s do that put my hand there and then there so two simple cuts on our sour so now put them in the oven my oven is preheating at 230 really really hot because there’s a lot of dough going into it and that will suck up the heat in your oven so you need your oven to be really really hot to start with and then we turn it down halfway through baking with a lot of steam so in your oven we go heat heat [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] they’re in and so at that time where we become very impatient to see what’s going on in the oven we just wait and wait and wait and let the dough do its job let the steam do its job so the steam will soften the top of your crust and then the gas will expand hopefully we got the beautiful ears on top and the magic will happen so cross fingers now going to leave it for 10 15 minutes at a high temperature so the oven recover and then we turn it down the bigger the bread the lower the temperature you got to go after that otherwise you’re going to burn it won’t be baked inside properly so we’ll have a look inside the oven about 10 15 minutes see you then [Music] so we’ve seen the crust is start to form now my oven has recovered which mean what I mean by recover when you load your oven it will drop on temperature recovering is when it goes back to temperature it’s been about 12 minutes now so I’m going to turn it down to 210 degree you can see it goes off the larger the loaf you bake you drop your oven small loaf like baguette fugas high temperature is fine but a large love need to bake inside if it’s too high you will burn the outside and it be very inside so we’re going to control the temperature like so so the first one is out the other one is double the weight so it be another five six minutes in the oven but this in here look at this look at the color of that crust in here oh it’s nice beautiful love nice and light smell is gorgeous and the last one the big one look at this so I’ve done different on this one the last five minutes I turn the dial down and I put it to about it was about 170 180 just to give that nice crust a nice finish without coloring too much a small oven domestic oven can be very fierce sometimes beautiful crust all the way around your soo look at this gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous cool them down and eat now