From Scratch to Scrumptious

A few years ago, it seems like everyone learned to make sourdough. It was a time when yeast was scarce and everybody wanted to make bread.

If you haven’t joined this trend because you’re intimidated by how complicated sourdough bread can be, this is the recipe for you! A great beginner’s recipe that uses unfed starter, meaning you can feed it anytime the day before.

Plus, it bakes in a loaf pan, so you don’t need special loaf-shaping skills.

My family adores this bread! Freshly baked, it pairs perfectly with my Loaded Baked Potato Soup. It’s chewy in the center with a crisp crust and hearty enough to make soup a meal! When toasted, it goes perfectly with your morning eggs or as a compliment to black-eyed peas on toast.

Unfed starter: This is where the wild yeast and bacteria that raise sourdough bread live. Feed the starter 12-24 hours before you plan to start with the recipe.

Water: Use warm water, but not above 110°F, or this could kill your yeast.

Sugar: Granulated sugar. You can replace with honey or brown sugar, if desired. I haven’t tried maple syrup, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this would work, too.

Flour: This recipe uses all-purpose flour to make it easy on the amateur bread baker. In this recipe, it works beautifully.

If you wanted to go wild and shape your loaf without a bread pan, I would recommend switching to bread flour. Without the pan’s sides to hold the dough in, you’ll need a stronger flour with a higher-gluten content to help the dough hold its shape.

Salt: Every bread needs salt to wake up the flavor. Do NOT add salt directly to the starter. This will kill the yeast. Sprinkle it on top of the flour or mix it into the flour.

Sourdough is made with “wild yeast” and bacteria, which live in the starter. As the wild yeast eats up the carbohydrates in the flour, a process called fermentation, it excretes ethanol, lactic acid, acetic acid, and carbon dioxide.

• The ethanol, which is a type of alcohol, gets baked off in the oven. Sorry, your sourdough bread won’t become alcoholic no matter how long you ferment it.
• The carbon dioxide forms the bubbles in bread and causes the dough to rise up. The heat of the oven causes these bubbles to expand, helping the dough to rise even more.
• The lactic acid provides a slightly sour flavor, but this is a more gently tanginess, similar to yogurt.
• The acetic acid provides the sour flavor you know and love in sourdough breads.

The great thing about making your own sourdough bread is that you control how sour your final bread is. My family likes only a hint of the sour that comes with a sourdough bread, so we use the typical schedule as given in the recipe.

In order to get more sour flavor from acetic acid, the yeast needs more time to eat more carbohydrates. A longer rest time does the trick. Be careful though. Too long at too warm can end up with the yeast starving to death. Read on to learn how to keep your yeast safe!

If you would like a slightly more sour bread, adding only an hour to the rest period after the stretch-and-fold period increases the sour flavor noticeably without endangering your yeast.

If you plan on increasing this period longer, consider doing an extra stretch-and-fold. This redistributes the yeast’s food. The little pocket around the yeast gets refreshed with new dough for it to feast on.

If you like a really sour-tasting sourdough bread, shape your dough and have it rest in the fridge overnight to let the flavor develop fully. The cold temperature allows the yeast to slow their metabolism enough to eat and ferment but not die. Bake the bread the next morning.

What bowl should you use to rest your dough? Any bowl with room for the dough to expand will work fine. Bonus points if your bowl has a lid!

If you don’t have a bowl with a lid, you can use a slightly damp tea towel. This keeps the top of the dough moist and prevents further evaporation. If you think your dough is too wet, use a dry tea towel to allow some evaporation.

One of the best things I’ve learned as a baker is that sticky dough won’t stick to wet hands. It’s amazing! That’s why you *must* wet your whole hand before doing the stretch and fold!

To stretch: Imagine the dough as a clock. You will will fold 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00. First, using your damp hand, grab the 12:00 portion of the dough. Stretch up as high as you can without breaking the dough. Fold it over to the middle of the clock. Turn your bowl a quarter turn. Grab the dough and stretch again, folding it down to the center again. Repeat for 6:00 and 9:00.

The first time, it will feel almost like stretching water or wet sand. It won’t really hold together. It just runs right out of your hand.

By the second or third stretch and fold, it will start feeling more like regular dough. The gluten will develop and hold it together more. You won’t get nearly as high of a stretch.

This is when the bubbles of your sourdough really go wild. By the end of this period, you will have giant bubbles. If you were making a traditional, shaped loaf of sourdough, you would want to be extra careful not to burst those precious bubbles. (They make your bread look super rustic.)

But we’re not making a traditional loaf of sourdough. We’re making the easy loaf! Go ahead and pop those bubbles! We’ll form new ones when the bread is resting in the loaf pan. Your final loaf will look more like a regular loaf of bread without tunnels and large pockets of air. You could actually make a sandwich without worrying that your filling will fall out!

If you’re in a rush and just want to scoop the dough straight into the pan, you would still get a decent loaf of bread. I believe that if you bake your dough and it makes a loaf of bread, you’ve done a good job! Don’t stress!

If you want to do things the “official” way, you should try to shape the dough. I like to do this in the bowl. Less mess to clean.

Using only slightly damp hands, stretch the dough into a rough rectangle. Roll up like a sleeping bag, pinching the ends to seal.

Gently transfer the dough, seam-side down, to a greased bread pan.

Poke and prod your dough to more or less fill out the bottom of the pan. Pop any bubbles that you don’t want in your final loaf. Cover with a damp tea-towel or the lid from your bowl, if it covers the pan.

Let the dough rise until it is near the top of the pan or cresting slightly.