Simple Naturally Leavened Sourdough Loaf
All my sourdough recipes come with inspiration from my favorite sourdough baker, Melissa Richardson and her indispensable books, including Beyond Basics with Natural Yeast. For my own health, I use whole grain flours in my bread products. You may substitute baking or bread flour, if you prefer.
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 Cups of Warm Water
- 1/2 Cup of Active Sourdough Starter*
- 1/2 Tbsp. of Sea Salt
- 2 Tbsp. Butter or Oil
- 5-6 Cups Flour**
Instructions
Prepare the Sponge (Dough)
- At least 61/2 hours before baking, combine 2 1/2 cups of water, 1/2 cup bubbly starter, 1/2 Tbsp. of sea salt, and 2 Tbsp. of butter in a mixing bowl. You may also mix bread dough in your high powdered mixer if the motor is big enough to handle the load.
- Slowly add the flour a cup at a time, waiting for each cup to incorporate before adding another.
- Resist the urge to add more flour than the recipe calls for and watch for the dough to clear the sides of the mixing bowl. You may have little remnants at the top, but the dough should have cleaned everywhere else. If you add more flour than you need, you end up with dry bread.
- Knead the dough from 8-10 minutes. You know the bread has been kneaded long enough when it becomes smooth and uniform, resists your kneading pressure, and can pass the windowpane test***.
- Form and smooth the dough into a ball and place it into a greased bowl. Cover it will a lid, bees wax wrap, plastic wrap, a clean shower cap, or anything that will trap the warmth and moisture inside the bowl.
- Place the bowl in a warm place and let it rise for 6 hours or overnight.
Shaping, Final Rise, and Baking!
- After at least 6 hours, remove the dough from the bowl and let it sit on a clean work surface for a few minutes. Use this time to grease your baking pans and dampen your work surface.
- Cut the dough into two equal sections and shape each, one at a time. Keep your hands and your work surface damp to avoid sticky dough but don't drown them. You want everything moist, not dripping. Shape for loaves, rolls, round loaves, etc. (I like to bake rolls in greased muffin tins.)
- Score the top of each loaf with a few quick slashes of a knife across the top and place them into their pans.
- Allow the dough time to rise one more time - this usually takes between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 hours, depending on how warm it is in your house. The dough is ready when it slowly recovers from a gently finger push.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F/176°C oven for 35 minutes or until the bottom of the loaf read 180°F/82°C with a thermometer.
- Remove from the pans and allow the loaves to cool before cutting into them. If you can stand to wait that long, that is. Just be careful not to crush them when cutting while they're still warm. FYI, warm bread may still seem a bit doughy as the wet steam continues to escape until the bread is cooled completely.
Notes
*You may use unfed starter, aka discard, for this recipe, too. This can make novice sourdough bakers nervous, but I promise it works just fine. If you think about it, adding unfed starter to your recipe is like giving it a huge feed. It will bubble up after it feeds and ferments, never fear.
**There is often great debate amongst sourdough bakers about which flour is best to use for bread. For a light, quintessential sourdough loaf, I recommend organic, unbleached white flour (as pictured in the recipe photo).
However, you may swap out some of the white flour for whole wheat, einkorn, or spelt. The more whole grain flour you add, the more dense the resulting loaf will be. This is not a bad thing, but it may not be "the look" or flavor you want.
I suggest you experiment A LOT to find your favorite flours. We have a lot of recipes here on the site that use a variety of flours. Go try some!
If your fermenting dough seems sluggish, place it in a warmer area like near (not on) a woodstove or on top of the refrigerator. It will rise in a cool house, it will simply take longer.
It can be helpful to tie a string or place a rubber band around the jar at the baseline of your starter right after you feed it to measure its rise as it feeds/ferments. The starter should at least double in size to be ready to bake bread by most sourdough recipes. Even if you use discard to raise your loaf, it's good to know where your starter started (no pun intended).
You may substitute 1-2 cups of whole wheat flour for a favorite flour like spelt or einkorn. These add flavor and health benefits and can improve the texture.
***The windowpane test is a quick check in the world of bread baking to see if your dough has been kneaded enough. Squeeze off a small handful of dough and slowly pull it between your two hands. If the dough holds together without breaking until you can see light through its stretched skin, its done!
I don't always knead my loaves, FYI. Sometimes, I just fold them over a few times until they're a nice, smooth ball and then allow them to rise. Which the do just fine and the texture is great. There are soooooo many ways to make great sourdough.
If you prefer a sandwich shaped loaf, use cast iron bread pans which are slightly more narrow and upright than regular loaf pans. Sourdough needs discipline and a reason to stand up tall. Cast iron pans help with that.
For more troubleshooting, grab your copy of Beyond Basics with Natural Yeast and/or Melissa's first book, The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!