Yukos Blog: Quick HowTo about sourdough bread

Since I don't bake bread every week, I choose the option to dry my sourdough when I don't need it. Therefore these instructions cover my normal workflow, from dried sourdough through re-activation, feeding, baking, and back to dry sourdough.

Hints:

I use rye flour type 1150 or whole grain rye flour. For water I just use tab water that I fill into a bottle on the day that I start feeding to let it reach room temperature.

My standard recipe which has always served me well requires 400g of rye sourdough. I usually bake on a Friday to have bread on Saturday, so I need to start on Tuesday evening with the re-activation. If you want to also create more dry sourdough, start a day earlier.

Don't use a too small bowl. If the sourdough is very active, it can easily reach 3x its volume when "digesting". Once I came back the morning after feeding it and it had crawled over the edge of the bowl ...

Also, I do everything at room temperature. I don't measure temperatures. If you do the research, there are strict instructions about how many times you should feed at which mix ratio between flour and water and at which temperature ... to me that's all too complicated, and it works the easy way, so I don't see a reason to change anything.

Re-activation of the sourdough:

I take 45g of dried sourdough, put it into the bowl of my kitchen machine, add 110g of water, stir it a little so all the sourdough pieces are covered with water, cover the bowl with a plastic bag and a few towels (to reduce evaporation of the water), and let it rest for roughly 2 hours, depending on how thick the pieces of sourdough are. After two hours I stir, and if the remaining pieces are still too large, I let it rest a little more. But usually it doesn't matter, they'll still dissolve later on.

Feeding the sourdough:

For the first feeding, I add 45g of rye flour. This time I add no water (the water was already added in the re-activation, that's why there are 110g instead of 55g). I stir with a big spoon (rye flour mixes quite well without clumps, don't worry) and try to leave the edge of the bowl as clean as possible with all the sourdough in the bottom of the bowl, to prevent it from drying out.

Now the bowl should contain 200g of "sourdoug" (not all sour yet).

Twice after 24 hours (e.g. once Wednesday and once Thursday) I add another 45g of rye flour and 55g of water. After both feedings the bowl should contain 400g of "sourdough".

With each feeding, the dough becomes more active, since the mix ratio between real sourdough and new "food" increases. That can be seen by more air bubbles. That's the sign that the dough is healthy and good. If there are no bubbles until the end, I'd leave it a little longer between feedings. If you get a mature sourdough from someone who has used that dough for a while, then that shouldn't be an issue. Mature dough is very robust and can take quite some abuse without dying. If you start your own sourdough, that's very sensitive and can turn bad very quickly. It also needs quite a few iterations/feedings before it turns stable. So I'd always suggest to get sourdough from someone who got it from someone who got it from someone ....

Making more sourdough and drying it for storage:

Anyway, now you have 400g of sourdough ready to go. If you want to create more sourdough for drying, you just feed it another time (45g rye flour, 55g water) and let it rest another 24 hours (I then start a day earlier with the re-activation, to bake again on Friday). I usually make a lot of extra at once, dry it all, and then each time I bake bread I only have to go until this step because I have still more left. When I see my backup fading, I start to make more dried sourdough. If you now have 500g of sourdough, you just take a big baking sheet on a baking tray and spread your 100g of sourdough as thinly as possible. Then you just let it air-dry, don't use the oven for this. It takes 1-3 days, depending on how thick it is. It will start to lift and crumble all by itself. After a few days, I put it in a screw top jar, and leave it open for another few days before I close the lid and put it into my cupboard. It can now last a long time like this, months to years.

Making the bread:

So usually on Friday morning I make my bread. I have the recipe from the book from Martin Pöt Stoldt. It's the easiest recipe I found and super delicious! I don't use the bread spice. I've tried it once and didn't like it. So I don't mention it.

You add to your bowl with 400g of sourdough:
400g rye flour type 1150
400g wheat full grain flour
300g water
50ml oil (canola, or whatever is there)
1 tablespoon salt (depending on taste, I usually prefer a teaspoon)

I mix that all very well with the kitchen machine. If you don't have a strong one or a good dough hook, you'll have to use your hands ;) It's very sticky! Knead it well!

Let the dough rest for half an hour, just as it is, just inside the kitchen machine. Then mix it again for a few minutes.

Growing the bread:

What I've found to work best for baking is a cast iron pot (mine holds 5L and it's perfect for this volume of bread). This way the humidity stays in the bread, so it doesn't get so dry, therefore I don't have to water it, and the size and form is nice. Rye bread tends to run flat on your tray, because it doesn't have so much gluten as wheat flour.

So I try to get my very sticky dough out of the bowl, make it round in my hand, cut the top with a few diagonal 1-2cm deep cuts (so the bread can grow), and put it into a long-lasting baking sheet inside my cast iron pot. I put the lid on and let it rest.

If you don't have a cast iron pot (get one! It's very worth it! I found mine on ebay Kleinanzeigen for very little money!), let it grow in a bowl so it doesn't run flat already. Spread some water on top, unless you can close the bowl air-tight. Cover it nonetheless. For baking you'll have to put it on a normal baking tray or a roast. You'll have to add water somehow. Online research says that just putting a cup of water on the bottom of the oven doesn't work (I haven't tried it). They say you should add a second baking tray below the bread while pre-heating the oven, and then quickly throw a cup of water into the hot oven right after adding the bread, and another time halfway through. The water evaporates immediately, so take care not to burn yourself! Also, I tried that in the beginning, and my oven made horrible cracking noises for an hour, I was quite scared I had broken it. I hadn't, but I got the iron cast pot right afterwards ;)

The rest depends on how much time you have. The warmer it is, the shorter the resting time. When I'm at home, I leave it at room temperature for 2-4 hours (depending on the room temperature ;) ). If I have to work and want it to grow for 7-9 hours, I put it in the basement, where it's about 17 degrees. If you have to stay away even longer, put it in the fridge, but then let it adjust to room temperature again for a while before baking. If it has to go quicker, you can put it in the oven with the oven lamp on, but don't turn the oven on! The growing phase should not happen above something like 40/45/50 degrees (I'm not sure exactly which).

Baking the bread:

To bake it, the oven has to be insanely hot right in the beginning. I normally never pre-heat my oven, except for this bread. When the bread goes into the hot oven, it gets another push for growing more, so the bread becomes lighter (which is a good thing, you want that!). So for baking in my cast iron pot, I take the bread out of the pot and let it wait in another bowl. The dough has most probably reached the lid of the pot (and then fell back down a little), so I need to clean the lid. Then I put the pot and the lid onto the roast in the oven and pre-heat everything to 250 degrees for 45 minutes (the pot has to be HOT! Very very hot!). Then I open the oven, open the lid (these pots come with special lifting tools), insert the bread as quickly as possible, close the lid and close the oven (It helps to be two people for this).

If you don't have that pot, you still pre-heat the oven. Probably 30 minutes should be enough, since you don't need to heat the pot as well. Then you put the bread on its (long-lasting) baking paper onto the roast. The bread will run flat a little and push into the roast, so later you have that shape on the bottom, but that's ok. It shouldn't run off the paper. I haven't tried it with a normal baking tray. And now good luck with keeping the humidity high!

The bread entered the oven at 250 degrees. After 10 minutes, turn it to 230 degrees. After another 10 minutes, turn it to 210 degrees. After another 10 minutes, to 180 degrees. Now another 30 minutes and the bread is done. There is no difference in this whether you use a pot or not. But it may depend on the oven. Try what works for you.

Then I take the bread out of the pot/oven and let it cool down on a cutting board. I cover it with a few clean towels to let it cool down slowly. No idea if that's needed, I just do it.

Don't cut it yet. The bread needs some rest before it's good, otherwise you get many crumbs at the cutting edge. I start cutting it for breakfast on Saturday. If you want it for dinner on Friday, shift the schedule accordingly.

A little more theory on feeding:

When you read about it, people usually use 3-step-feedings with special temperatures and times and mix ratios. Some use 1-step to keep it super simple. I do the middle way, I do 3-steps the easy way. So if you want to create a LOT of sour dough, you may get tired of always just adding 100g. After I have fed 3 times, I take the new amount (e.g. those 400g in the bowl), and take that as my new "base amount" for the next 3 feedings. So then I add 400g*0.45=180g of rye flour and 400g*0.55=220g of water with each of these three feedings. After that, I have 1200g of sourdough. That should last a lifetime!

Another approach would be to start with 50g dried sourdough and 60g of water (120g to take double), and then use these 110g of re-activated sourdough as the base. After 3 feedings, that gives 440g of sourdough. You can then use these 40g remaining sourdough to continue feeding.

Notes:

You can continue feeding the sourdough with any other flour if you need a non-rye-sourdough. I've only tried wheat so far. Other flours, like e.g. rice flour or whatever else is there, should theoretically work, but I've never tried them, and they can be more tricky. Check the internet, there should be information.
Don't fuss about the single grams. A little more or less here or there will still result in sourdough and bread. Don't take out your super-precision-letter-scale ;)

I think that's it :) Any questions, feel free to ask and I'll update.

The sourdough just after feeding

good looking, well digested sourdough

Sourdough spread out thinly to dry

Dried Sourdough

The sourdough covered and left to "digest". Next to it are the room-temperature water and the rye full grain flour.

This one was baked without the pot. The crust was quite dry and hard and the inside was quite compact, but the taste was still delicious! I cut it a little too quickly after baking, so the cutting edge is a little crumbly.

This one was baked with the pot. You can see the larger air holes, which make it nicer. also it doesn't crumble when cutting, and the crust is not too hard, just perfect.