Sourdough Bread 101!

Friends, we are long overdue for a little tutorial on how I make my sourdough bread, aren’t we now? And before you yell at me in the comments, yes, this recipe is in grams. So, you are going to want to get yourself a scale. All right, this method might seem a little bit backwards than what you’re used to, but please just stick with me here. It’s known as the Ottoise method. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to mix 700 g of water with 1,000 g of flour. I do 150 g of whole wheat flour and then the remainder of bread flour. I like to mix it using a combo of a wooden spoon and a plastic bench scraper. And you just want to combine everything until there are no more dry lumps. It should look something like that. You’re going to let that sit for about 30 minutes to an hour. This just gives the flour a chance to hydrate and the gluten to start to form before you add your fed sourdough starter. I fed mine the night before, so she’s ready for me right in the morning. You’re just going to go in with 225 g of that bubbly starter. Add to that 25 g of kosher salt and then just use your hand to work everything together until it comes into a nice bowl. Now, here’s the part where I always tell people sourdough isn’t necessarily hard, it’s just timeconuming. You’re going to need to tend to this baby about every half hour. You’re going to come to it with wet hands and perform some folds or turns, whatever you want to call it. This is where I find using a bowl with a handle comes in handy. And just keeping your hands damp keeps the dough easy to work with. Now, you’re just going to do this every half hour or 45 minutes or so until the dough has about doubled in size. You’re going to start to notice that the dough is going to get a lot more elastic. It’s going to be a lot more smooth, and it’s just going to be really nice to work with as you perform these folds. After about the second or third fold, I like to start doing the window pane test, which is what you see me doing there. The window pane test is basically when you pull on the edge of the dough and it gets so thin that it’s basically like looking through a window pane. And that’s essentially a really good indicator that the gluten formation in your dough is right on. And you’re going to have that nice iconic chewy sourdough that we all love. Okay, I performed five sets of folds and then my dough had doubled in size. So, I dumped it out onto the counter and I cut it into two equal portions. I just eyeball it. If you wanted to get really technical, you could weigh them. And then you’re just going to roughly form them into balls for now. I like to use two fingers and the backs of my hands to pull it in on itself until it’s formed into a nice little ball. Then you’re just going to cover that up with a kitchen towel. And here we go again, letting them rest for another half hour to an hour right there on the counter. Now you’re going to work your final shaping. I like to use as little flour as possible. And you’re going to invert them and then shape them just like I do here. Making a little seam down the middle and rolling it in on itself. I know people can get really fussy with the shaping process, but just do your best here. Right into your lined baskets they go. Or you can even just put a kitchen towel into a bowl and make sure that it’s well fled. Here’s another angle of that same shaping process. Just roll it in on itself and then into the basket it goes. And then you probably guessed it, more waiting. It’s going to go into the fridge. I like to do this overnight. You can bake them same day, but I just find that they hold their shape much better and the flavor develops a lot better in the fridge. Into a Dutch oven that’s been preheating in your oven at 500° it goes. You drop down the temperature to 465. Bake for 24 minutes with the lid on and an additional 18 minutes with the lid off. And you should have yourself an absolutely beautiful loaf of sourdough bread. And you guys didn’t think I was going to leave you hanging with the crumbshot, did you? There you have it. A nice little sourdough tutorial for you.