Refining My Sourdough Recipe

I started baking sourdough because a friend in Birmingham happened to mention that there was a bread you could bake with nothing but flour and water. After that I went looking for recipes on YouTube and online, raised a culture, and started baking.

The trouble is that almost no shop in Japan sells sourdough, and almost no book here is written about it. In the end there is nothing for it but to build up experience yourself, a little at a time, through trial and error and failure.

Today I want to introduce a sourdough recipe book. It is called "SOURDOUGH", put together by two young home bakers living in Norway, Casper Andre and Martin Ivar. The sourdough they had been posting on Instagram for about five years became popular, and the book followed.

From this rather beautiful book I chose a rye loaf to bake. Several parts of it differ considerably from how I usually work — the way the leaven is built at the start, and a cold ferment in the fridge for the final proof. The dough is also much wetter than mine, and the bake is about ten minutes longer to match.

What characterises the recipes in this book is that they do not use my usual approach of mixing the sourdough starter straight into the dough. Instead a small amount of starter is first mixed with flour and water and left to ferment, and that becomes the leaven that goes into the dough.

Step 1 — Building the leaven

Ingredients (leaven):

• Starter (rye and whole wheat)20g
• Bread flour (Golden Yacht)8g
• Rye flour7g
• Water (around 20°C)15cc

1. The night before, take the sourdough starter out of the fridge, discard a third to a half from the top, add rye flour, whole wheat and water, mix well and leave it on the counter.

2. Weigh out 20g of that starter into a bowl. Add the measured bread flour, rye flour and water and mix well.

3. Cover the bowl loosely and leave it at room temperature for two to three hours. Once it has risen, this is your leaven.

---

Step 2 — Making the dough

Ingredients (dough):

• The leaven from step 150g
• Bread flour (Golden Yacht)200g
• Rye flour50g
• Water (around 20°C)200cc
• Salt5g

1. Dissolve 50g of the leaven from step 1 in 200cc of water. Add 200g of bread flour and 50g of rye flour and mix. Use a scraper, turning the flour and water up from the bottom of the bowl, and combine it roughly.

2. Once it has come together, cover the bowl loosely and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes to an hour. Without kneading, time draws the gluten out of the flour (autolyse).

3. Scatter 5g of salt evenly over the dough from step 2. Work the salt in by pinching the dough into small pieces between your index finger and thumb. Breaking up the gluten formed during the autolyse allows a stronger, more complex gluten network to form again. Gather the dough into the middle of the bowl and rest it for about 30 minutes.

4. Do three stretch and folds, at 30-minute intervals. For how to do a stretch and fold, see this video →Basic sourdough bread: how to do a stretch and fold

5. Using the scraper, ease the dough gently out of the bowl onto a floured surface. Flatten it lightly into a rough square, fold it in from all four sides, shape it loosely, and let it rest for about 15 minutes.

6. Finally, stretch and fold about four more times to build tension across the surface, and shape it into an oval. Dust the top with flour and place it in a cloth-lined banneton, turning it over so the floured surface sits at the bottom. For how to shape the dough, see this video →Basic sourdough bread: how to shape the dough

7. After about two hours the dough should have risen to two or three times its size. Once it has, put the basket straight into the fridge and rest the dough there for about half a day. A long, cold ferment lets fermentation proceed slowly, deepening the aroma and giving a more fragrant loaf.

---

Step 3 — Baking

What you need:

• Dutch oven (220mm internal diameter, 100mm deep)
• Baking paper
• Razor blade

1. Take the basket out of the fridge and let it come back to room temperature. Meanwhile, put the Dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 250°C.

2. Once it is up to temperature, turn the dough out of the basket onto a sheet of baking paper.

3. Score the top with the razor.

4. Take out the Dutch oven, lower the dough in on its paper, put the lid on, and bake at 240°C for 20 minutes.

5. Take the lid off and bake at 230°C for a further 20 minutes.

The conclusion from this bake: Golden Yacht really does not suit sourdough. Over a long ferment the dough goes slack and the score will not open properly. The taste is very good, mind you.