European Sour Dough recipe

A tried, tested and reliable Sour Dough recipe. What's more, it can be adjusted and tweaked to suit your preference for brown or white bread (see Optional Ingredients step).

This bread has a chewy and open consistency, really tasty crust and goes well with additional herbs and seeds.

For these instructions it's assumed that your Sour Dough Ferment is healthy, recently fed and bubbling with activity.

Step 1: The basic order and timing

Day before baking;
          9:00pm      -  Mix the 'Starter', this needs roughly 12 hours to grow and replicate

Baking day;
          9:00am      -  Mix the dough by adding extra ingredients to your starter
                              -  Then let it rest for a bout 10 minutes
                              -  Once the liquids have soaked into the flour it's time to knead
                              -  Allow dough to rise for 4-6 hours.
                              -  It needs to double in size, so keep it warm and cosy
          2 or 3pm    -  Knock back the dough to remove the biggest bubbles and divide
                              -  Shape into loafs or place into floured formers
                              -  Allow loafs to prove for 1-2 hours
          4 or 5pm    - Flour the loafs, slash the surface and bake
                              -  Allow the loafs to completely cool

Comments

[Mark_in_Hollywood]

For a way the professional bakers make a sourdough starter, see my post:

http://dangermencooking.blogspot.com/2004/10/i-promised-to-write-about-fermented.html

[tz1_1zt]

Many thanks for adding link. Very handy because I've not yet written instructions for making my Sour Dough Ferment.

Just to make things clear, where Mark_in_Hollywood's link refers to a "Starter", my Instructable calls it a "Ferment". I use "starter" to refer to a different part of the process. My recipe is not a San Francisco Sour Dough, more of an old fashioned European fermented bread.