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Hi, I'm Julie from Cultur for Health. Today, I'm going to show you how to make a wonderful loaf of sourdough bread.
Now, the recipe I'm going to be using is very simple. It's one of my favorites because it's just a couple of ingredients, but you can use the tips and tactics I show you today and apply them to any recipe for making sourdough bread to get a great end result. So let's go ahead and get started.
Now, the first key to getting wonderful, light, fluffy sourdough bread your family will love is to go ahead and make sure that your sourdough starter is fully activated. That the yeast and bacteria in the starter are at their highest state of activity prior to using them to make bread.
Now, here's how you're going to do that. If your sourdough starter is kept in the fridge, and most people's is, you want to pull it out of the fridge a day or two before you're ready to make your sourdough bread, and you want to start feeding the starter. So let's say, for example, you go ahead and pull your sourdough starter out of the fridge on Thursday night, and you're going to feed it. And then you're going to feed it every 8 to 12 hours for three feedings before using it to make bread.
So let's talk briefly about how to feed your sourdough starter. We have more information on feeding sourdough starter, though, on our website. We have a separate video for that too, if this is a topic that you need a refresher on. So, to feed a sourdough starter, if you're using a scale, you're going to use equal amounts by weight, so equal amounts of sourdough starter, flour, and water to feed that starter. If you're using measuring cups, you're going to use one part sourdough starter to one part water to a little less than two parts flour. So, for example, if you were using a quarter cup of sourdough starter, you'd add a quarter cup of water and a little less than a half a cup of flour.
Now, with three feedings using those ratios, you're going to end up potentially with a lot of sourdough starter. So here's a couple of things to keep in mind. One, you can start with a very small amount of starter in your container. You can put as little as a tablespoon in here if you wanted to. It's a little more practical to start with about a quarter of a cup, but a small amount is fine so that each feeding, as the sourdough starter grows, you don't end up with too much sourdough starter or end up using too much flour.
The other trick is that if you do end up with a bunch of extra sourdough starter, use it to make pancakes. We have a great pancake recipe on our website. You just use your excess sourdough starter and mix it with a couple of other ingredients. They make delicious pancakes. They go great in the freezer for a quick meal if you can't eat all those pancakes right away.
So, but you want a healthy, happy, active sourdough starter prior to making bread because this is ultimately the only thing you have to leaven your bread and to get it to rise and be nice and fluffy. So you want to make sure that yeast and bacteria is very happy. So three feedings before you bake with your sourdough starter. Okay, so three feedings between the time it's in the fridge and the time you go ahead and bake with it, 8 to 12 hours apart. Cannot emphasize that enough. Without that, that step, you're going to end up with something that's much smaller, more dense, hard things you don't generally want from your bread.
Okay, so this sourdough starter has been fed for, I think we actually have four feedings on this one now. So let's go ahead and pull some out. Now, our recipe calls for two and a third cups sourdough starter. So go ahead and measure that out first. And sourdough starter can be a little messy and a little sticky. Quick tip, whatever utensils you are using with your sourdough starter, be sure to clean them as soon as you are done working with your sourdough. This must be the original glue, it is so sticky, and it can just cause real havoc if you don't clean out your utensils right away. So, if you're like me and you have small children who seem to be anti-cleaning schedule, go ahead and just get everything soaking in maybe a sink full of warm water, something like that.
Okay, so that's two. Okay, let's just grab a plate here we can set things on so we can keep the sourdough starter off the table. Okay, one more third cup. Sometimes it has a bit of a mind of its own. Okay, there we go. Perfect. Okay, so let's set those off to the side. Okay, so there we have two and a third cups of sourdough starter. We'll go ahead and put the lid back on our container. I got this container at a local restaurant supply store. These are awesome. They're not only big so that they accommodate sourdough that's rising really nicely, but they have this nice lid that you can either put on loosely if you're letting your sourdough proof so the gas can escape, or you can go ahead and snap it all the way on if you want a secure refrigerator.
Okay, so I'm going to set this off to the side here. Put that on the shelf down there. Okay, so we have our sourdough starter and the next step is to add some salt. So we want a little less than a tablespoon of salt. Okay, so I'm going to pour really carefully. I'm just using a Celtic sea salt here. Always recommend using a high-quality salt. Sea salt is one of my favorites.
Okay, and then we're going to add our flour. And for flour, we need three and a third cups for this. Okay, number one, number two, three. And we just need about a third of a cup. All right. And then we need about a cup of water. Now, the recipe calls for somewhere between one and one and a half cups of water. And this is where it's really going to vary a little bit depending on a couple of things. First, depending on how hydrated your sourdough starter is, how precise those measurements were when you were feeding your sourdough starter and your ratios were with the flour and water and sourdough starter. Your sourdough starter may be thicker or thinner than maybe another time that you're making it. So you kind of have to play with the flour and water ratios a little bit with a bread recipe because ultimately what you want is bread dough, but you need bread dough that is not too dry. Wet bread dough is better. I know that seems strange, but it really is because your bread is going to lose a lot of water obviously when it bakes. And so when you get when you have moisture dough to start with, you end up generally with moisture bread. But it's a trade-off because you still have to be able to knead your dough.
So we're going to go ahead and get this going here and get this stirred up. So that was it. I mean, it's sourdough starter, flour, water, salt. This recipe is also on our website too, but it's just I love this recipe because it's so easy. I don't need to drag a bunch of ingredients out of my cupboard and it can come together really quickly.
Okay, so you'll notice I'm doing this by hand, and I have a stand mixer next to me. You can do this in a stand mixer, and stand mixers are so wonderful and helpful. I'll often use my mixer to do sourdough bread at night because I can keep the process really fast. When I'm making sourdough bread every day, I can actually get the process down to maybe 10 minutes at night to get everything prepped and ready to go, and maybe five or 10 minutes in the morning at the most. So you can really get a rhythm with this. Remember your grandma, your great-grandma used to do this every day, so it's not hard at all.
Now, if you're going to use a stand mixer, what I normally do is just use the mixing attachment for this part, just to get everything mixed together, and then I switch to the hook attachment for the kneading process. The one thing you want to watch out for with the stand mixers, though, as convenient as they are, they have a couple of problems. One is that they tend to be, you have to kind of watch your speeds on this and make sure you're not going to have your because something heavy is in here, your bowl can actually detach. So just be careful about that. Secondly, this part right here that ends up attaching through another piece up into the motor area can get really hot. And so you want to be careful that this part is not overheating. So if you're using your mixer to mix and knead your dough, just double check that this is not getting too hot because if it does, the heat can actually damage the yeast. Sourdough yeast is a little bit more sensitive than other forms of yeast. So just be really careful with that. But stand mixers are great and that their cousins, the different varieties that are out there, are great too.
So, okay, so we have our dough mixed together. Still a little bit of flour that needs to be incorporated, but we have plenty of kneading to do. So we're going to get started and go ahead and do that now.
Okay, so now it's time to knead our dough. We've mixed all of our ingredients together, and I've turned it out here on a board with some flour. Now, this is the second critical step, kneading. The first step we talked about getting that sourdough starter fed three times prior to using it to make bread to make sure the yeast and bacteria are fully activated. So that was critical. Second critical step is a very thorough kneading. Now, this is again something you do not want to skip.
Now, if you want to do the kneading with your mixer, that's fine, but you want to make sure your mixer is not overheating as you're kneading your dough. You may need to add a little bit of flour to it if it's a little too wet. You'll see it sticking to my fingers, but I'm actually okay with that because I like having a more moist dough. I like using a minimal amount of flour in my dough so that I get the moist bread in the end. So it's just that fine balance between being able to work with your dough and not having it get too dry.
So we're going to go ahead and knead and knead. So if you're kneading by hand, you're looking at 10 to 20 minutes of quality kneading. Let's add a little more flour, it's getting a little too sticky. Go. If you're kneading in a mixer, you may be able to get away with as little as 10 minutes. This is not a part you want to skimp on, though. You want to make sure that your gluten is fully activated in your dough before proceeding to letting your dough rise.
Now, you don't have to knead all 20 minutes at once. It can be a little tiring. You can do 10 minutes and then take a break, do another five minutes, take a break, something like that. But ultimately, you want to get your dough well-kneaded to get the gluten fully activated so that you get a good rise out of your bread and good texture out of your bread. You're not going to wear your dough out. If you're kneading by hand, you have to be a little more careful to make sure that you don't over-knead. But with your mixer, you're going to wear out long before your dough does. So if you're kneading by hand, just keep going until the dough is ready.
Okay, so we have been kneading for about 20 minutes now, and the dough is getting very elastic. So the texture has changed. It's a pretty cool feeling, and once you've made a couple of loaves of bread, you'll begin to recognize it pretty quickly. Now, one thing we want to do is make sure that we have kneaded the dough enough. So we're going to take off a chunk of dough here and we're going to stretch it between our fingers. This is the best way to test and make sure your gluten is fully activated. So I'm going to do a little. Hard to see. I'm just going to stretch the dough between my fingers. What you want is the dough to become thin enough that you can actually see light through it. If you hold this up to the light, you can actually see light through it. If your gluten is not fully activated, the dough will break. It'll just do that, basically, before you get stretched that thin. So this dough is looking good. It's been well-kneaded. Looks like it's ready to go.
Let's give a couple more turns, get it formed into a somewhat uniform ball. This recipe actually makes two loaves, so we need to split this dough in half. Let me grab a knife here real quick. Okay, so let's go ahead and slice our friend here in half. Okay. Okay, we're going to set you off to the side. Okay, and we need to go ahead and form our loaf. Now, I am not the best loaf former. I'm not going to win any awards on this one. Normally, what I do is just kind of make a football shape. Today, we're going to use a bread pan here, just a regular loaf-size bread pan. If you want, you could form this other half, for example, into just a nice tight ball, kind of like the artisan style. Artisan style breads, however shape you want. At this point, you can be creative and form whatever shape you want. But I kind of like this nice football shape for going right in the bread pan.
Now, I've greased my bread pan with some ghee. You can use pretty much any oil that you would normally cook with that can handle high temperatures. So you'd probably want to stay away from olive oil that isn't really supposed to be cooked with at high temperatures because we're going to put this in a 400-degree oven eventually. Ghee is a good one. Coconut oil is a good one too. So just, you know, whatever oil you would normally cook high temperatures with should be fine.
Okay, we're going to go ahead and put that right in there, and then we're going to cover this guy up. Now, this is critical step number three for light and fluffy bread your family is going to enjoy: a long rise time, also called a proofing period. This is where the sourdough starter that you had fully activated is going to have time to eat the flour and the water that we just mixed in and kneaded in, and it's going to create gas and make the bread rise. So we want to go ahead and set this in a warm place. If your kitchen is relatively warm, it should be just fine there. You can also put it maybe on top of the fridge, something like that. But you want to give sourdough longer to rise than you would a regular one of those packets of yeast from the grocery store. It's a very different situation. So sourdough generally takes 4 to 12 hours to rise properly. And I think this is a big mistake that people often make with sourdough is they think it's going to rise as quickly as commercial yeast does, which is generally an hour and a half to two hours. So give this plenty of time.
This is a Chamod sourdough starter that I'm working with today. It's one of the starters we have on our site. We have 15 others too. I just happened to grab this one to work with today. It's rising right now in about 5 hours. So 4 to 8 is pretty average. If you want sourdough bread that is more sour, you'd want to go ahead and give it a longer rise time. You can let your sourdough rise for up to 24 hours.
Now, one more quick thing. You'll notice I put this dough directly in the pan to rise. Many people like to do a second rise or second proof on their sourdough. So maybe you go ahead and let this guy rise for a couple of hours, four, five, eight hours, and then you punch it down and let it rise again. You're welcome to do that. That can be a great technique. I'm just a very lazy baker and I don't have that much time on my hands, and so I generally just let my bread rise in the pan or in the shape and then go ahead and put it in the oven once it's risen. So you only need to let your bread rise once, but if you want to go ahead and do a second cycle, that's fine too.
So this guy's off to the side. We have dough in the pan, ready to go, and ready to rise. We're going to let it sit in a warm place for 4 to 8 hours, and I am going to show you what it will look like in that period of time. Isn't that pretty? So I set this up early this morning, and so it's had a chance to rise, and it's actually more than doubled its size at this point. One of the things I love about glass baking dishes, you can use whatever you want, but I love that I can see all the bubbles. So I can see how pretty all the bubbles are and the space that's created as the gas forms and the bread rises. So this guy is ready to go in the oven.
So we're going to preheat our oven to 400 degrees and go ahead and stick this in. Generally, you're looking at somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on the size of your loaf. If you're making two loaves of bread for this batch, it's going to be closer to 30 minutes. If you decide to make one gigantic loaf with double the dough, you might need to go an hour. So just depending on what you're going to do. Now, you want to go ahead and just keep an eye on it to judge that time. The good news is, once you get your situation down, though, for your temp, what your oven is at 400 degrees, the actual temperature it is, and how long it takes to bake bread, is just a one-time thing to figure the temperature out.
So let's take a look at what this looks like once it's baked. So 30 minutes later, your house smells delicious, and you have a beautiful loaf of baked bread. Couple of tips. One is to check the internal temperature of the bread when you pull it out of the oven. There's two reasons for this. One, you can avoid a doughy, uncooked center this way, make sure it's cooked all the way through. And two, you can avoid overcooking your bread, which will dry your bread out. So you can just use a regular thermometer, cooking thermometer like this one with a pointed tip. This is the same one I used to check the temperature of meat, for example. And you're going to stick it in the side of the bread and just stick it into the middle. Now, you're looking for a temperature somewhere between 190 and 210 degrees. So since there is a little bit of carryover temperature with any baked good, where the temperature keeps rising even after you pull it out of the oven, you generally want to probably pull your bread out by 200 degrees if at all possible. So just an easy way to make sure you don't undercook your bread.
Now, once your bread has sat for a few minutes outside the oven, go ahead and pull it out of the pan, set it on a cooling rack to make sure that it cools thoroughly and you don't end up with a soggy bottom from the condensation.
Okay, so let's go ahead and slice and eat this. Bread is actually fully cool by the magic of television. I've let the bread cool. So let's go ahead and give this a quick slice and see how it looks inside. And there you have it. Let me pop this up so you can see. So we have a nice good crumb, lots of air pockets, not too big though, so light and fluffy bread. And that's it. That's how you make light and fluffy bread.
So remember, there are three secrets to getting a good loaf of sourdough bread. Make sure that sourdough starter is fully activated and those yeast and bacteria have been fed three times prior to using the starter to bake with. Make sure you knead your dough thoroughly. You want at least 20 minutes of hand kneading, and you want to be stretching that dough and making sure the yeast or the gluten in the dough is fully activated. Activated gluten means you get this nice texture. And then finally, allow enough time for this to rise. You're looking at 4 to 8 hours for a natural sourdough such as this. And if you want sourdough bread, actually a sour taste to your bread, give it 12 to 24 hours and allow that dough to ferment. That's how you make a basic loaf of sourdough bread. These techniques can be applied to many sourdough bread recipes to get better results. Check out our website for more ideas, recipes, and tips. We also have a community forum where you can talk with others who are interested in baking sourdough bread. I'm Julie from Cultures for Health, where healthy food starts.