Sourdough Part III - the Bread! The finale!

So here is my bucket of dough. I'd never let it rise that much and so I was little nervous. But I see bubbles and went for it. 

(Update - I've had the dough rise so much it's pushed the lid off and it still turns out fine! Amazing!)

Dumped it onto the counter - unfloured - and divided it into two. Didn't measure it - you can if you want. 

Now you're going to want to shape the dough. I don't know how to explain this - I highly recommend watching this 3 minute video.  I don't use flour so I can build some good tension in my dough. 

Tension = good for the end result. Sometimes, I shape it, let it sit 1/2 hour and then shape it again. 

(Also I've gone to shaping it just once and it's also just fine. I had one ball of dough get all funky with me and I let that sit for 1/2 hour and shaped it again = just fine.) 

During this 1/2 hour, I prep my bannetons - these cane dough bowls. (You can get them a lot of places. Brad had one and I ordered another off of Amazon. One is slighter bigger than the other. They were in short supply and so I just took whatever I could get. I don't use the liner that comes with it. And I rarely clean in between batches. They need to be dry - if you've cleaned them, you need to let them dry for a day or so before using again.) 

Get them damp (I use a mister spray bottle) and sprinkle a generous amount of rice flour on them. Rice flour enables the dough to come out clean - I used to use regular flour - I'd put a TON in there and it would still stick sometimes. Just use rice flour. I promise it's worth it. 

Now that the dough is shaped, there is a top side and a bottom side - simply because you've focused on the top side and the tension. So put it with the nice side down in those prepped bannetons. 

I cover with these huge plastic bags that I reuse almost every time. I shove these in the fridge overnight. 

The next morning, I pull out the dough, out of the bags. This dough is really active. The starter is happy happy happy. It usually doesn't rise at all but it clearly did here. 

I've found if you have good parchment paper (the best really is from King Arthur Flour) you don't need to flour the bottom or crinkle it. If you don't you want to do the following:

Sprinkle some flour on the bottom - doesn't matter what kind. 

This prevents it from sticking to the parchment paper. I crinkle my parchment a bit so it will move with the dough more. Sometimes it works better than others. 

Turn the dough out onto the parchment paper. I do try and get rid of the extra flour. Just less messy. 

I have had loaves that are almost as flat as a pancake when I've put them on the parchment. Never know what's going to happen. DON'T GIVE UP. Have faith that your starter will pull through! 

Now for scoring. You can find a ton of videos and pictures on this. I purchased some really inexpensive blades on Amazon that are doing a great job. The idea here is to create a path for the dough to expand. If you don't score it, it may not expand much or it may create its own path. But there are some really cool scoring designs out there and it's fun to do. 

I bake it in two big soup pots (sometimes a dutch oven type thing - get a cheap one!) that have been heating in a 500 degree oven. The longer you let it heat up, the better (within about an hour). I don't always have the patience or foresight to make that happen. 

Carefully put the dough/parchment into the hot pot, cover and bake for about 20 minutes. Usually, I turn the oven to 450 when I start actually baking but sometimes I forget. You're going to need to eyeball it. You want the dough to be starting to get brown before you take the lid off. 

Then take the lid off and bake another 10-20 minutes - depending on how dark you like it. 

The loaf below on the left is the one that I scored above. 

Other loaves I've done. The scoring on the loaf in the pic below, top, should have been deeper. 

I made these loaves before I converted to rice flour. The patterns are cool but I'll never go back. 

And here is the inside. Nice bubbles. Soft and so so delicious. 

 

Let it cool until you can't stand it anymore and then slice into it. I finally bought a good bread knife and it really does make a difference. You can get some inexpensive ones on Amazon. 

Here's the thing - baking sourdough is a steep learning curve but the flavor is so so worth it. 

For some good tutorials, Food Geek and Grant Bakes are my favorites. The Bread Code and Bake with Jack are also good. There are a billion. Find one that YOU like! 

Addendum:  I always make two loaves. All of my kids are living here at the moment and so we go through them pretty quickly.  And if not, I like to give one away. It's just as easy to make two as it is to make one since I have the equipment. Yes, I just double the ingredients. Easy peasy. 

I have made this in a single day before. But that's not typical. I was up pretty early - fed my starter and it grew very quickly, the dough rose quickly, put it in the fridge for a few hours after shaping and then baked it at night. Usually, I feel my starter sometime before noon, mix the dough and let it rise all afternoon, shape and put into the bannetons & fridge overnight and bake first thing in the morning. Luckily, my oven will let me program it and so I can start heating it before I'm up. 

To me, this is one of the best things about sourdough - if you need to ignore it for a couple of extra hours, that's fine. It's probably not going to rise too much. The only time I've had to toss my dough because it rose too much was when we had a power outage and I couldn't turn on my oven. 

Keep trying! I'm still learning! I work with the shaping, the scoring, the baking.... it's all a learning process and you get some really delicious bread out of it!