Sourdough Bread

Now that I have a sourdough culture, I make a loaf of bread about once a week. Before this summer, I'd never made a yeast bread before--I felt that yeast was too fussy, too particular, too delicate a process, and that's just not my thing. I like forgiving recipes I can experiment with. And this sourdough culture lets me do just that. With my KitchenAid mixer to do the kneading for me, the breadmaking process is actually really, really simple. The only thing I really need to attend to is the scheduling: because it takes such a long time to rise, I just need to make sure I plan enough ahead of time to allow for that rise. And that's the hardest part.

So, I start by taking the culture out of the fridge 18-24 hours before I want to mix the dough. I pour off the hooch, feed the culture (.33c flour, .33c water), and let the yeast feed for a while.

The starter after being fed 36 hours ago and sitting on the counter.

18-24 hours later (so, in the evening if I fed the culture at breakfast, the next morning if I feed it during the afternoon--I don't keep a strict timing here) I pour off the hooch, mix together the culture, and pour about half of it into the bowl of my mixer. It's probably between 1/4 and 1/3 cup--maybe even up to 1/2c sometimes. I then feed the starter again to replace the volume I just took out.

Starter in the mixing bowl.

To the starter I add, in this order: 2c whole wheat flour (measured using dump and sweep), 1tsp-ish salt, up to 1/4c sugar (I've been using brown sugar lately, but I've also used plain white granulated sugar before), and 1-2tsp spices (usually cinnamon, or chai spice mix, or pumpkin pie spice mix, or nutmeg).

Dry ingredients. I used pumpkin pie spice mix this time.

To the dry ingredients plus starter, I add half a cup of water and a good squirt of honey from the bottle, and stir with a silicone spatula. I observe how well (or not) the batter is coming together, and then slowly add more water until all the dry ingredients are sufficiently incorporated. I never add more than another half cup at this point, for a grand total of up to a cup of water.


Now that the ingredients are all incorporated, I knead the dough for 15 minutes on low speed in my mixer.  I add white all-purpose flour throughout the kneading process, basically enough to keep the dough from sticking to the sides of the bowl. The dough should stay in a coherent lump around the kneading arm; it should not stick to the sides or bottom of the bowl. I guess I can add anywhere from 1/3 to 3/4 cup of flour in the kneading process.

When kneading, the dough should form a ball and not stick to the sides of the bowl.

After 15 minutes of kneading (but I've kneaded for up to 20 minutes at times), I add in any raisins, nuts, or whatever other mix-ins I want.  I then knead on low for another few minutes, just long enough to incorporate the mix-ins.


At this point, I cover the dough in a light dust of flour, just to make handling easier. I take out the kneading arm, scrape the dough out of the bowl, and form it into a ball (following the method Bridget from Cooks Illustrated/ATK uses). I put it into a sprayed loaf pan, spray the top of the dough, and cover loosely with plastic wrap.

Ready to rise.

Now it's time to hurry up and wait. Rising takes between 12 and 24 hours. If I start the rise at night, the dough is not ready to bake until 8ish or 9ish (dinnertime) the next day. If I start it in the early morning before breakfast, it is usually ready to bake after dinner. The daytime heat helps the rise along, I assume. I leave the dough to rise in the laundry room; we have the vents closed in this room (to save energy), so in the summer it's the warmest part of the house.  It's probably in the mid 80-degree range during the afternoons.

(Once I intended to bake it at night, but ended up going out for dinner and drinks instead. So, I got home around 1am and the bread was really, really risen, and I was not going to stay up to bake it. So, I pounded the pan on the counter, releasing a lot of the air in the bread, and let it do a second rise overnight. The second rise thing is a standard technique; it makes the sourdough flavor more prominent, though the bread did not rise as much the second time through.  So again, this recipe is really forgiving.)


I consider the bread fully risen once it is between 1/2" and 1/4" from the top of the loaf pan.  At this point, I put it into a 350-ish degree oven and bake for around 30 minutes, taking it out whenever it looks done enough. One "tell" is the sides of the loaf: if they're amber and have pulled a bit away from the pan, the bread is done.

I take the loaf out of the oven, and let it cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes. I scrape around the edges of the pan with a spatula, and then invert the pan on a cooling rack. I let the bread cool a loooong time, often overnignt, and then put it in a bread bag (what sliced bread comes in from the store, saved and neatly folded in one of my kitchen drawers). It sits there on the counter for storage.

These photos are of a cinnamon brown sugar honey whole-wheat raisin loaf that I made last weekend. The raisins are from grapes we grew in our garden; I'll post about those later.