Time to dive into my sourdough recipe! As I stated in my introduction to sourdough, you do not need a Dutch oven, or a banneton to do this recipe! If you have one – great, it will make it a bit easier. But as a reminder:

Dutch oven alternative:

1. Use a large oven safe stock pot with a lid! It works the same exact way. Or…
2. When you preheat your oven, put a cookie sheet on the bottom shelf. Bake your bread in some kind of pot/pan that helps it hold its shape. When you put the bread into the oven, put water or ice cubes on the pan on the bottom shelf. Close the oven up quick, and you have a steamy oven!

Banneton alternative:

1. Put a non-shedding towel in a colander and dust it with (a decent amount) of flour. Then put your dough in that for its final rise. Or…
2. Just dust any bowl with flour!

Now, time to bake!

Ingredients

This recipe will take about 8-12 hours to complete, but don’t worry, it is probably less than 30 minutes of active participation.

I work in grams when I baking, using the cheapest scale amazon had to offer, but I will do some approximate conversions for anyone who doesn’t have a scale.

• 300g (1 cup) of Sourdough starter
• 300g (1-1/4 cups) of luke-warm water
• 400g (2-1/2 cups) of bread flour
• 12g (3 tsp) of salt

Mix those ingredients together in a bowl with your hands or a spatula. Try to not let the salt land directly on the starter before mixing. This is just good practice because salt can kill yeast.

Kneading the Dough

Once the dough is mixed, let it sit in the bowl, covered, for 30 minutes (ish).

This next part is going to be vague, but that is mostly because there is not a strict way you have to do it. Hailey barely kneads her dough and her bread tastes great. And I knead mine a couple times. It is really subjective, based on how you like your end product and how much time you have available.

BUT…this is what I do and I think it makes pretty amazing loaves of sourdough consistently.

I fold my dough (see video below for an example of dough folding) every 30-45 minutes for the first 3 hours after I mix it. This is the part that is subjective. Hailey only folds it once or twice and I fold it 4-6 times.

The initial mixture is a very hydrated dough. It is very hard to knead, but that hydration gives the big holes that everyone loves in the sourdough. Folding the dough creates the gluten structure that holds the dough together while it rises. You will end up with a less dense roll the more you fold it.

My kneading steps

1. Mix the ingredients, let sit for 30 minutes
2. Fold the dough, re-cover, and let sit for 30-45 minutes
3. Repeat step two 3-5 more times

That is it!

Letting the Dough Rise

After you are done kneading the dough, let it rise in your bowl, covered, for 3-5 more hours. You do not need to touch it, just put it on top of your fridge and set a timer.

After the first rise is done, you will transfer your dough into your floured banneton (or banneton substitute) and cover it again. Before I cover it, I generally apply some olive oil spray on top just so it doesn’t stick to anything.

Then. let it rise on the fridge again for 2-4 more hours! I usually just base it on what time I need to go to bed/how it has rose until that point.

Baking the Dough

Preheat your oven to 450°. It is nice to preheat your oven for 30 minutes – 1 hour before baking, but you can just preheat it normally too.

This is where the dutch oven, or dutch oven alternatives, come in. I usually bake my loaf on a piece of parchment paper too, because I don’t love the mega crisp on the bottom of my loaf.

Baking steps

1. Transfer your dough from the banneton into your dutch oven. This is where you score the top of it. This is just cutting the top of it allowing the dough to rise. Put the lid on if applicable.
2. Bake at 450° for 25 minutes.
3. Reset the oven temp to 425°
4. Take the lid off (or remove the steam tray from the oven), and continue baking the loaf for 30 minutes (you do not need to wait for it to get to 425°).
5. Voila! You are done

Let your loaf cool for an hour at least before cutting into it.

This time I decided to make a herb and cheese sourdough loaf (comment if you want that recipe).

Let us know how you like the sourdough loaf you created!

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