This gorgeous loaf still requires patience, but instead of a challenging ‘starter’ it uses kefir. Both contain similar bacteria and yeasts for leavening and flavour development – it’s just that one requires a week’s prep before you can start to bake, the other you simply pick up in the chiller aisle
Sarah, a former food editor, has now been writing and styling recipes for over 10 years. Born in NZ, to Irish-English immigrants, and married to a Polish-Scot, her food is as diverse as her family, with a particular passion for baking mash-ups.
See more of Sarah Cook’s recipes
Sarah Cook
Sarah, a former food editor, has now been writing and styling recipes for over 10 years. Born in NZ, to Irish-English immigrants, and married to a Polish-Scot, her food is as diverse as her family, with a particular passion for baking mash-ups.
See more of Sarah Cook’s recipes
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Ingredients
500g strong white bread flour, plus extra to dust
1 tsp fast action dried yeast
1 ½ tsp fine sea salt
200ml plain kefir
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Keeps for up to 2 days ,or can be frozen (well-wrapped). A defrosted whole loaf should be crisped up for 10 minutes in an oven preheated to 160°C, fan 140°C, gas 3.
Start this the day before you want to eat your bread, beginning in the morning. Weigh 100g of the flour into a medium-sized bowl and stir in the yeast. Add 150ml of lukewarm water. Mix to a batter, then cover and leave for 5 hours at room temperature.
After 5 hours, weigh the remaining flour into your largest mixing bowl, or a stand mixer, and stir in the salt. Mix your kefir with 50ml water, then add this and your now bubbly batter to the flour. Mix to a smooth dough, progressing from a wooden spoon to hands. The dough will be very, very soft. Tip onto a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes until the dough is very smooth, elastic and springy. It will be fairly sticky but try to add as little extra flour as possible. If you’re using a stand mixer instead, the knead time will be halved.
Return the dough to the cleaned bowl, cover and leave to rise overnight at room temperature.
In the morning, scrape out the bubbly batter-like dough onto a floured work surface. Leave to settle and spread for a few minutes, then gently stretch and fold the dough over itself, from each of the 4 sides. Repeat this a few times to help strengthen the dough’s structure; it will start to hold its shape. If it is really too sticky to handle you can incorporate a little more flour as you go, but only if it’s absolutely necessary; this dough is meant to be quite slack and stretchy, not like a normal bread dough. When it will hold a rough ball shape, flip onto a sheet of floured baking paper so that the ‘folds’ are underneath, and finish shaping into a neat ball. Leave to rise, uncovered, for 45-60 minutes – don’t worry if it spreads out a bit.
Meanwhile, place a deep, lidded casserole dish into the oven and heat to 240°C, fan 220°C, gas 9 (the casserole acts like a miniature steam oven, trapping moisture from the bread and giving a better rise).
When the casserole is really hot, carefully lift in the loaf on its paper. Score a pattern in the top, cover with the hot lid and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid (use oven gloves) and bake for 15 minutes more until the crust is dark golden. Cool on a wire rack before slicing and eating.
Tip
This gorgeous loaf still requires patience, but instead of a challenging ‘starter’ it uses kefir. Both contain similar bacteria and yeasts for leavening and flavour development – it’s just that one requires a week’s prep before you can start to bake, the other you simply pick up in the chiller aisle.
Over the years, I've found keeping the mixture warm at around 80°F (26°C), and high hydration (100% water to flour in baker's percentages) helps get things started. In addition, while not mandatory, using certain flour also helps increase the chances a starter will take hold quickly (see below).
And you guessed it..the more starter you use, the faster your dough will ferment - resulting in a less sour loaf. Using less starter in your recipe will help slow down the fermentation process.
A 1:2:2 feeding ratio would consist of one part existing starter, two parts flour and two parts water. For example, if you have 30g of existing starter, you would feed it 60g of flour and 60g of flour. The most common feeding ratios for daily maintenance are 1:1:1 or 1:2:2.
As with any sourdough recipe, before you start baking bread, you want to make sure that your sourdough starter is as strong as possible. My basic sourdough recipe uses just 50g of starter for 500g of flour (so just 10% of starter).
The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour. Why do you need to use these two types of flour?
For more tang: Incorporate some rye flour and/or whole wheat flour early in the bread-making process, such as when feeding the mother culture and the preferment. Rye flour in particular will help your culture produce some acetic acid.
High Temperatures - preheating your oven with your sourdough starter inside can lead to your starter's demise - but it would have to be completely baked for it to be completely unresponsive to some TLC.
It would be best if you discarded some portion of your starter each time you feed it unless you want to continue to let it grow. Eventually, you need to discard the used “food” (flour and water) that's been used to sustain your starter during the last fermentation period.
If you think you killed your starter with heat, always use a probe thermometer to take the temperature in the center of the starter. If it is below 130F/54C it is still alive, even if it was exposed to a higher oven temperature for a short time.
I wipe the top and rim of my starter jar every time I feed, which helps keep most of the jar clean. Transfer your sourdough starter to a new, clean jar whenever your current jar becomes overly crusted with sourdough starter. I typically do this once every two weeks.
When starting to build your starter you can leave it a bit thinner but once you start making bread you will want it THICK, You want your sourdough starter to be the consistency of thick pancake batter. if it's too thin add a scoop of flour.
Typical feeding ratios are 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 (old sourdough: fresh flour: water). However, even extreme ratios like 1:50:50 would still work. In that case, the freshly fed sourdough would just require more or much more time to grow and reach its peak, as judged by the maximum volume increase in the jar (at least doubled).
To keep a smaller starter, you will save just 20 grams (about 1 heaping tablespoon) of active starter, feeding it with 20 grams of water and 20 grams of flour. This will yield 60 grams of starter which is just enough to maintain.
So if you look solely at the ingredients, it is cheaper to make your own sourdough. But if you bring other factors into it - it might not be as cheap. This post aims to show you how you can bake a classic sourdough loaf with a little work and no fancy equipment.
While the age of your starter won't make your bread any better — turns out, only good sourdough practices can do that — it's a link in the long legacy of sourdough, one of the oldest forms of baking that exists. Whether your starter is a week or a decade old, you can become part of that lineage as well.
A 100% hydration sourdough starter is a culture which is kept and fed with water and flour at equal weights. Like for instance 5 oz water to 5 oz flour. A 166% hydration starter is fed with equal volume of flour and water, which most typically is one cup of water (8.3 oz) and one cup of flour (5 oz).
Place your starter in a warm spot to rise and activate, ideally 75-80 F. Temperature is really important. The warmer it is, the faster it will rise. Your starter is active when it shows the following signs: doubles in size, small and large bubbles appear, has a spongey or fluffy texture and exhibits a pleasant aroma.
Introduction: My name is Annamae Dooley, I am a witty, quaint, lovely, clever, rich, sparkling, powerful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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