If you’re been following my Instagram account lately, you know I’m completely in love with the whole process of making sourdough bread. Just like so many other people, I’ve used all of the extra time at home during this quarantine to finally embark on the amazing sourdough journey.
Also, with a baby on the way, I know that my low key days are numbered, so I’m using my time wisely to get as comfortable with bread making as I can. Luckily, I’ve had some amazing sourdough mentors so far along the way.
The first part of making sourdough is creating a starter. The starter acts as a natural leavening agent, much in the way that yeast would. This was by far the most exciting, but most anxiety-inducing part of the process for me. I had many moments when I could see that my starter was just not cooperating with me. That’s when I reached out to my two friends, Bella, founder of ful.filled and and Julia, founder of Bread and Basil. Both of these ladies are incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to all things sourdough and they both just put out guides to creating a sourdough starter and making sourdough bread, so I highly recommend you check them out.
Once I got my starter bubbling and happy, it was time to make the bread. For this I used Bella’s guide from top to bottom and I couldn’t believe how beautiful and tasty my first loaf came out! I had to make a few modifications based on the flour I had available and I cut the amounts in half to make one loaf instead of two, but it still came out perfect!
The next time I made bread, I decided to make the two loaves and gifted one to my brother and sister-in-law. I also used some of the leftover starter I had to make some sourdough rosemary focaccia! For this recipe, I turned to Alexandra’s Kitchen and it came out so amazing, I don’t know if I would even want to try another recipe.
I did make a few changes to the instructions based on some of the comments and because I only had all purpose flour, I used that instead of bread flour. In terms of the instructions, I did 5 rounds of stretch and folds in 30 minute intervals, instead of the one stretch and fold recommended. I got away with only 50g of starter because my kitchen is relatively warm this time of year.
All in all, this was an incredible recipe and I can’t wait to play around with different toppings moving forward!
For full recipe, click here. I recommend doing the 5 stretch and folds in 30 minute increments like I said. Some of the comments also recommend a 1 hour autolyse of the dough before adding salt to develop the gluten and an overnight proof in the fridge. I didn't do this, but I might try that next time just to see the difference. I do use these techniques when making regular sourdough bread so I think it's worth a try.
Ingredients
Instructions
