(Mass Appeal) – The Sourdough Contest is an event celebrating bread, bakers, and Dewey Hall. If you want to support the history and all the hall has to offer, you can submit your sourdough recipe. Here with the details, and to show us how the bread is made, is Sarah Reynolds North, Baker and the Owner of Found Bread.

For Sourdough making pop-up classes e-mail: sarah@foundbread.com

DAILY SOURDOUGH BREAD

You’ll need a mature sourdough starter to mix this bread dough. I highly recommend any baker purchase a small scale to get more exact measurements. That said, I have converted the formula to cups for ease.

INGREDIENTS:
This formula makes one kilo loaf of bread (or two smaller loaves).

400g (3 cups) white flour
400g (3 cups) whole wheat flour
600 ml (2 3/4 cups) warm tap water
25g (2 Tablespoons) sea salt
175g (1 cup) mature sourdough leaven

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Mix the warm water into your bowl first with the sourdough starter. Swirl it around to break it up. Then add flour and mix, and then salt. You can mix the dough most easily with your hands, using all your fingers and then squeezing them into a fist around the dough, over and over until all is combined. It’s hard to overwork the dough at this stage, so go for it! You can also mix this dough in a mixer.
  2. Let the dough rest covered for 30 minutes. Then, take the lid off and fold your dough up and over on itself, in big motions. Don’t worry if the dough pulls apart, the glutenous structure is just beginning to form. Pull one edge of the dough up and over onto the rest of the dough and do this same motion all around the bowl, 4 of 5 times. Let it rest again for another 20-30 minutes.
  3. Repeat these steps twice more, each time letting your dough rest in between folds. After this last fold, let the dough sit covered in the bowl for 4-7 hours, so it nearly doubles in size. The warmer your kitchen, the faster it will ferment and rise.
  4. Once the dough has risen enough, wet your hands and pull the dough out onto a lightly floured counter top. Here’s where you do your first shaping. There are many shaping videos online and many ways to do it (check out my Instagram feed @foundbread for some). Shaping takes practice, so stick with it! Pull the dough into a round ball by gently pulling it towards you with open hands, dragging your pinkies along the counter at the edge of the dough. At this point you can either leave the dough on the counter for its last rise (another few hours) or you could put it back in the bowl, cover it and put it nto the fridge overnight to bake int he morning. (If you want to bake your loaves in bread tins, cut the loaf in half before shaping and make two loaves. Grease your tins and put the bread in for the last rise.)
  5. If you have a dutch oven, heat it up with the lid on or use a pizza stone – 500F. This free-form round loaf will bake best with steam so if you plop it onto the stone, remember to flip it over so the seam side is up to bake and cover it with a metal bowl (That stone is hot, watch your hands!) Or use your dutch oven, open the lid and gently dump the bread seam side up and cover.
  6. Bake for 15 minutes at 500. Then lower the oven temperature to 430 and bake for another 20 minutes. If you are using a dutch oven, take the lid off at this point for the last part of the bake.
  7. The bread continues to bake once you take it out of the oven, so let it cool for a bit before you cut into it. Enjoy!