Howdy Folks I'm Ben star the ultimate food geek welcome back to my kitchen today I am going to perform a miracle or at least it's going to look like a miracle to those of you who have spent hours and hours watching Facebook sourdough videos and think that baking a loaf of sourdough bread is about as complicated as I don't know figuring out your Facebook privacy settings nobody can figure that out right folks you have been lied to YouTube channels are teaching High hydration sourdough methods as if they are the only way to make sourdough bread why exactly is the internet absolutely overrun with these really complicated sourdough recipes if it doesn't have to be that hard well the short answer is holes for some odd reason right now people love to cut into a loaf of bread and see big old giant holes for some reason they prefer the taste of a hole to the taste of bread what does a whole taste like well hopefully it tastes like nothing but if we're trying to smear Del delicious Jam or butter or olive oil on our bread what happens if there's big giant holes you can't smear anything on a hole and I don't know about you but I am way too busy to be babysitting my dough during that bulk fermentation with all the stretching and flapping and folding and strength building techniques that honestly you don't need if you lower the hydration of your dough and let it make itself you don't have to feed your starter before you bake with it you don't have to knad your bread you don't have to slap it or fold it or babysit at every 30 minutes during the first rise for it to turn out you don't even have to preheat your oven folks you can put your loaf of rising bread directly in the cold oven and turn it on and it will bake you a perfect loaf of sourdough bread for over 4 years now tens of thousands of people all over the world have been using my simple sourdough method to bake gorgeous Artisan sourdough at home with less than about 10 minutes of effort spread across 24 hours so today I'm to teach you how to do that using the feedback that I've received from over 4 million views and tens of thousands of comments and questions from viewers now for those of you with only a Tik Tock attention span folks this recipe does only take about 10 minutes of effort once you have mastered it but I cannot teach you how to do it in 10 minutes Nothing in life worth learning can take only 10 minutes to learn so sit down buckle up plug in your attention spans and watch this entire video because this is a master class on the methods and science of producing easy lwh hydration sourdough and once you have mastered this process you will be able to churn this loaf out at home with practically zero effort now for the first part of this video I'm just going to do a quick demonstration to show you how truly easy it is to do this and prove that it works all right our first ingredient is sourdough starter 4 oz cold sleepy unfed straight from the fridge I haven't fed the starter in like 3 weeks 12 O of water going to get that stirred together 1 lb and 4 oz of flour I'm using an organic unbleached allpurpose flour but bread flour also works and 7/10 of an ounce of salt any type we will talk more about the salt content in the second part of this video this is a slightly higher salt content than most average bread recipes but the higher salt content is the reason why this recipe works and is so flexible now now we're going to get all of that stirred together and when it gets a little bit too stiff to stir with a spoon we're going to switch to our hand this is technically a no need recipe so you're not going to be needing this for like 10 or 15 minutes the way you would a traditional dough but it's easier to bring it together with your hands yes you can use a stand mixer if you have one but it only takes 15 or 20 seconds to get the rest of this dough brought together and it takes longer than that just to clean the stand mixer so I like to do it with my hands all right now I'm going to oil the bowl cover it and ignore it on the countertop until tomorrow all right it has been about 18 hours and as you can see my dough has beautifully well really tripled this recipe is super flexible as long as I wait for it to double which happened at around the 12-hour Mark I can proceed so I could have shaped this 6 hours ago or I could wait another 3 or 4 hours to shape it depending on my schedule how nice is that I'm going to very lightly flower the surface not too much remove my dough and it's time to shape flower the hands and I'll talk a little bit more about shaping of course in the second part of this video I'm just going to whip this into a nice tight Bol and don't worry I am going to show you how to make this in a loaf pan in the second part of the video so now I'm going to take my baking vessel which in this case is a cast iron Dutch oven oil it just a bit set that b into the Dutch oven and now I'm going to ignore it for 90 more minutes on the countertop 90 minutes later our dough it's ready for scoring and baking the simplest way to score is just with scissors I'll teach you alternate methods later in the video but for now we are just going to snip some lines in our bread and now it gets covered and placed in a cold oven now this might be the hardest part to understand of the whole process we have just put the dough into a cold oven now I'm going to turn the oven on to 425° F and start a 45 minute timer at this moment we're not waiting for the oven to preheat to start the timer we start the timer as soon as the bread goes into the cold oven and we turn it on 45 minutes and after 45 minutes we pull off the lid and the bread bakes for 15 more minutes and after 15 minutes it's done woohoo and we dump it out onto a cooling rack and we're going to wait about 30 minutes for it to cool before we slice into it but look at this folks I will be dead shocked if I invested more than 10 minutes of my time in this loaf over the last 24 hours I start it together forgot about it shaped it into a loaf forgot about it and then stuck it into a cold oven and turned it on and while you can certainly produce a more spectacular loaf with considerably more effort why the heck would you want to when you can get a loaf this perfect with practically no effort I'll be back in 30 minutes and we'll give it a taste all right this bread has cooled it smells amazing let's slice into it and see what it looks like really even open lovely crumb here folks this is the perfect bread for toasting for sandwiches for making french toast or just for dipping in olive oil and putting right into your mouth and speaking of that let's give it a taste we've got a really beautiful oldw world chew some nice crackle to that crust the flavor is very complex and only a slight hint of the sourness that a lot of people associate with sourdough bread that's because we're using refrigerated starter so the acidity levels of this bread are not very high it is astounding that the only ingredients in in here are flour water and salt we have a profoundly complex depth of flavor in this slow fermented bread okay it is time to begin the master class on how you can replicate this bread at home with an equivalent amount of laziness and I promise you can do it even if you have never baked bread ever in your entire life you can do this but folks my videos have had more than 4 million views and tens of thousands of comments and I have learned pretty much every single Pitfall that might befall you on this process bread baking is not as easy as following seven steps in a recipe that's not how it works folks your sourdough starter is completely different from my sourdough starter your kitchen's environment is different from mine your oven bakes at a different temperature and rate than mine does so there is no way I can tell you do this and this and this and this and it'll work for you it's going to work great for 80% of you and for the remaining 20% of you you're going to need a little help troubleshooting and this video encompasses pretty much any possible cause for the failure of this recipe all right step by step here we go folks please stick with me through the end of this video and don't skip ahead even if I start talking about something that you know about and you jump ahead you are going to miss something super important you're going to come back and ask me a question in the comments and I'm just going to tag the timestamp in the video where I already answered that question it's going to be super embarrassing and everybody's going to laugh at you all right please invest the time to learn this I am going to cram a ton of information into every second of the rest of this video first things first the scale folks I'm sorry to be the harbinger of Doom but you cannot achieve consistent results with baking unless you have a scale there is a reason why every professional Baker on planet Earth uses a scale instead of a measuring cup and that's because even these are not precise if you measure a cup of flour I measure a cup of flour and your neighbor measures a cup of flour you're all going to have different amounts of flour a scale is the only way to ensure consistency even a cheap scale will do but if you want my scale this is a restaurant quality scale that doesn't take weird batteries or you can plug it into the wall so you never have to replace the batteries a link to this model in the video description below just click where it says more now today I'm speaking in ounces because the majority of my audience is from the United States and we are taught ounces before we are taught metric if ever but the metric equivalents are right there on the screen and you can also get this full recipe written out in the video description below click where it says more or you can click this link to go to the recipe on my website ultimate food geek.com for an easy printable recipe our first ingredient is sourdough starter cold unfed straight from the fridge now the single biggest stumbling block that people have with this recipe is their starter and that is because most of you are feeding your starter regularly so your starter is very robust you have short fermentation times and this this recipe is not designed for that this recipe is designed for you to pull your starter out of the fridge even if it hasn't been fed in a week or a month or 6 months and use it unfed in this recipe now throughout the rest of the video I'm going to talk about how you can adapt this recipe to your starter if you regularly feed your starter but you're not going to get as much flavor in your bread if you were using regularly fed starter now the most important thing about your starter is that it must be at 100% hydration and that means that when you feed your starter you are feeding in equal weights of flour and water not equal volumetric measures a cup of water is 8 o and a cup of flour is 5 oz so if you are feeding your starter this way your starter is not at 100% hydration and I find that most people that have trouble with this recipe are overhydrated the extra water is coming from their starter and when this dough is overhydrated it does not rise properly luckily you can watch my troubleshooting simple sourdough video linked right up here if you discover that your starter is not at 100% hydration it's very very easy to fix now in the first part of the video I used a starter that hadn't been fed in 3 weeks but this starter you guys has been in my fridge without a feeding since January 11th that was 5 months ago I promise you even if your starter's been in your freezer or in the back of your fridge for months without a feeding it is still just fine and it will bake you a beautiful and delicious loaf of bread but if it's been a long time since you fed your starter you may discover that there is like a weird layer of sort of gray thick odds smelling liquid on top some of the old-timers call that Hooch do not ever pour off your Hooch you've just gotten rid of a bunch of the liquid in your starter and drastically lowered its hydration Hooch is fine it's not dangerous it's mostly water ethyl alcohol and fermentation byproducts it has a lot of flavor in it and you want that flavor in your bread so if you've got a layer of Hooch on top of your starter when you pull it out of the fridge the first thing to do is Stir that Hooch back into the starter so that you've got a homogeneous starter now you're going to notice that this starter is very liquidy much more liquidy than the starter I used in the first part of this video that does not mean that this starter is overhydrated or greater than 100% hydration as starter ages it becomes more acidic and acidity breaks down the bonds of gluten that are formed when flour gets hydrated so that flour can't hold on to the moisture as much the moisture comes out and you get a thinner structure that's perfectly fine it's okay if your starter looks thin and soupy as long as you are always feeding at equal weights of flour and water the less amount of time it's been since you're last feeding the thicker your starter will be but do not worry about your starter's texture if you are feeding at equal weights of flour and water each time all right we are starting out with 4 oz of 100% hydration starter a lot of folks ask me how soon after feeding my starter can I mix up a loaf well if you feed your starter regularly which you shouldn't you can pull off 4 ounces to BAC a loaf immediately after feeding your starter because it is robust and ready to go but keep watch on your rise times if you double in less than 8 hours you're going to risk over proofing if you rise your dough more than 45 minutes on the second Rise if you're like me and you only feed your starter when you get low and you need to make more I like to give my starter a big feeding typically my feedings are a pound of flour and a pound of water and I let it sit on the countertop for at least 4 hours until it starts to get bubbly at that point it's fine to pull off 4 ounces and mix up a loaf of simple sourdough next up is 12 O of water and folks ask me is that 12 ounces or 12 flu ounces they're the same thing folks now I'm using filtered water here and the primary reason for that is because my tap water just tastes bad and I don't to add an ingredient that tastes bad into my recipe right it's actually a myth that using City tap water will destroy your sourdough starter or ruin your bread it won't but municipal water sources do contain added bromine chlorine or chloramines as purifying agents and it is true that these have a hindering activity on the bacteria and yeast in our recipe so to keep your yeast and bacteria happy use filtered water if you have access to it bottled water from the supermarket or convenience store or filtered water from your fridge or just a regular old brda filter will be fine 12 oz of water all right now I like to stir those together especially if my starter is pretty stiff to distribute the starter into the water that just gets you a head start on mixing for the next step for those of you that like to add things to your sourdough like fresh herbs or jalapenos and sharp cheddar cheese this is the time that you will add virtually all inclusions for this recipe now I have a a very extensive video that I'll link to right up here called inclusions for simple sourdough you definitely want to check out that video if you like baking fun bread with all sorts of stuff inside of it now our flour I am just using all-purpose flour and that's because I don't have a ton of storage space in my kitchen to keep a bunch of different specialty flowers so I pretty much only keep the flour that I use for baking everything whether it's cookies pie crust or fresh bread this is an organic heirloom allpurpose flour that I get in bul at Costco for about the same price I would get a regular bag of flour at the supermarket now you can use bread flour which is flour that contains a higher protein content this means the flour has a higher gluten potential and it can result in a better rise and a slightly chewier texture to your bread bread flour is fine there's nothing wrong with it it's just I really prefer one flow stream for my entire kitchen and allpurpose flour works completely fine for this recipe we are using 20 oz or 1 lb and 4 oz of flour now I get a lot of questions about whole wheat flour no you cannot make this recipe with 100% whole wheat flour for 100% whole wheat flour you must use those complex High hydration techniques that involve a lot of strength building during the fermentation process but you can substitute up to 8 ounces of whole grain flour in this recipe either whole weed or Ry flour and the recipe will succeed as long as you increase your water content by 1 oz so for you whole grain Bakers please check the recipe itself for more information about modifying this recipe to incorporate some whole grains ditto for you folks that are using spelt or in corn some of the heirloom ancient wheat varieties and now our final ingredient salt I use Morton's kosher salt for pretty much everything but folks it does not matter what type of salt you use pink Himalayan Celtic salt sea salt fine grain coarse grain it does not matter as long as you are weighing your salt now this recipe calls for 7/10 of an ounce of salt 7/10 of an ounce is just over 3% of the baker's percentage for this recipe and it's true most sourdough recipes call for a ratio of 1.8 to 2.2% of the baker's percentage of salt so at 3% this recipe is higher in salt than most sourdough recipes there is a reason for this within our dough salt acts as a sort of love potion for two proteins that naturally exist in our flour called gadin and glutenin these are the subcomponents that come together to produce gluten which is the protein structure that makes flour work now for you gluten-free folks I hate to be the harbinger of Doom but you will never get an edible loaf of sourdough glutenfree bread because gluten is the thing that makes bread work so while it's very easy to create a gluten-free sourdough starter it is impossible to turn that starter into an edible loaf of bread you get something that has the texture of like a kitchen sponge that's been sitting in an old shack for about 200 years so if you try asking me for a gluten-free version of this recipe it's never going to happen I'm really really sorry because gluten is the thing that is responsible for the texture and the rise of bread and when those sub proteins glutenin and gadin link up they provide the structure that holds in the gas bubbles that are created by the yeast and the bacteria and cause the bread to rise but glutenin and gadin are a little bit shy folks they look across that dough Matrix at the other one they're like oh you're kind of cute I might like to hold hands with you but in most recipes it actually requires the needing effort of the baker to force those two proteins to come together at the school dance because they're so shy we are not going to need our dough for more than 15 or 20 seconds so the kneading process does not form the gluten structure it turns out that after we hydrate our dough or add water to it glutenin and gadin if given enough time staring at each other across the Dance Floor floor will eventually make their way together but because we're not needing the dough we're not forcing them to hold hands that is where the salt comes in because the salt is like that love potion it makes them hold hands and do all the other things that make them completely Inseparable so by raising the salt content of this recipe just a bit we get a stronger gluten structure which results in a better rise in a dough that we are not needing on some of my older videos you will see people saying oh this bread was inedibly salty I can't believe anybody likes this don't listen to those comments those people had a failed recipe they overhydrated overproofed or underproof and that means they did not get a good rise the crumb in the bread was extremely dense and thus the salt particles were closer on their tongue for a perceived overs saltiness this bread is not too salty for pretty much any normal pette I fed this bread to diners at my restaurant for 7 years to absolutely rave reviews but if you are on a sodium restricted diet you can certainly lower that content to to half an ounce or even less up to and including no salt at all no salt in the recipe can give you a very robust rise because while salt does strengthen that gluten Network it also curtails fermentation activity of the yeast and the bacteria that are inside our dough so salt is a little bit of a double-edged sword and I have found that 710 of an ounce of salt provides plenty of strength to our gluten Network while providing an intentional curtailment of the fermentation activity it's slows it down extends it over a longer period and the longer fermentation happens the more flavor we get so decrease the salt at your own risk your bread will rise faster and it will have less flavor and you need to be a little bit more careful about your rise times to make sure that you don't overproof all right let's get this stirred together when it gets too stiff for the spoon we ditch the spoon for our hand now if you've done some of those High hydration sourdough recipes and you're accustomed to this dough being extremely sticky and difficult to work with this is not a high hydration recipe so your hand shouldn't get absolutely coated with dough but it is going to leave a little bit of a sticky residue and you'll notice here even though that starter was a lot more liquidy this still has a very similar texture to the dough we mixed up in the first part of this video with a more recently fed starter so our hydration definitely isn't off if you are discovering that this dough is so sticky that it's just completely sticking to your hand that means you either mismeasured your ingredients or your starter is overhydrated and has more water in it than flour and if that's the case watch troubleshooting simple sourdough to learn how to fix your starter now you want to oil or spray your Rising vessel so that after the bread has fermented it's easy to take the dough out of the bowl however I'm going to show you another trick that's valuable for those of you who are new to sourdough baking and might have a hard time telling when your bread has actually doubled and that trick is rising in a Ziploc bag bag the Ziploc bag traps the carbon dioxide that's produced during the fermentation process and inflates the bag like a balloon and this gives you a very good visual clue of how long it is taking your starter to rise your dough it is certainly not required to use a plastic bag but it is a very very valuable technique and for those of you that hate plastic I completely understand that you don't have to do it but this is a great tool for beginners I'm going to take our bread drop it into the Ziploc bag press out the air and seal the bag now your bread is going to ferment at room temperature and I know room temperature is a very ambiguous term it's radically different from household to household from season to season and from geographic location to geographic location right throughout the year my kitchen's room temperature tends to vacillate between 72 and 78 de fhe that's like 22 to 25° Cs and this is the ideal temperature for bread to ferment in the winter time your kitchen might be down into the low 60s and that just means that it's going to take your bread longer to ferment but don't worry about that the longer the fermentation time the more flavor will be produced in our dough conversely if you live in a warm climate and your kitchen isn't air conditioned your kitchen might be mid 80s or even up into the '90s at some parts of the year in this case fermentation is going to take place much more quickly and you risk over proofing your dough in these types of circumstances so in this case you want to find the coolest place in your house if you've got a root cell put it out there otherwise put it in a dark cabinet close to the floor where temperatures Remain the coolest now here's the Crux there's no recipe on planet Earth that can tell you how long to ferment your bread that is a factor of your individual starter and its characteristics as well as the rising environment in your kitchen so I can't tell you this bread will be ready to shape in 12 hours or 16 hours or that after you shape it you only need 90 minutes before it goes into the oven you must must must observe your bread the first time you make it so that you understand how long it takes your starter to double your loaf so when you do this recipe for the first time please do it on a day off so that you can check in with your dough to see how quickly it's fermenting for most people it's going to take between 12 and 24 hours to double if however you have a starter that you feed regularly and it's robust your fermentation times are going to be significantly less than mine also if it's 85° f hide in your kitchen you are going to have shorter fermentation times as well you must wait until your dough has at least doubled before proceeding to the next step and the amount of time it takes your dough to at least double will determine how long you rise the dough on the Second Step before you put it into the oven so take note of the time it takes your bread to at least double now this recipe is super flexible so you can let your dough rise for hours beyond the point where it at least doubled in the first example our dough almost tripled it had doubled within 12 hours and I waited six additional hours to shape it that extra salt content in the recipe which strengthens our gluten Network helps give us a little bit of flexibility with our rise times and to be honest it's almost impossible to overproof your dough on the first fermentation however if it only takes your dough 6 hours to double it's going to be super easy to overproof on the second Rise so we need to know how long it takes our dough to double and we must wait until it at least doubles before proceeding to The Next Step a lot of folks ask me if it's possible to do a cold which means putting the dough in the refrigerator to slow down and extend the fermentation time this can be useful not only for flavor building but also for scheduling purposes if you're having a dinner party on Saturday but you've got a really really busy Friday and that's normally the day that you would start this loaf you can actually start this loaf on Wednesday or Thursday and it more time in the refrigerator that slows down the process but exponentially boosts the flavor if you're going to do that I really recommend you give your dough at least 6 hours of room temperature time out on the countertop before you put it in the fridge this allows the metabolic process of the yeast in the bacteria to really start going before you slow it down once it's in the fridge it can stay there for as short or really as long as you want up to about 3 days but we must must make sure that the dough has at least doubled in volume before we proceed to the next step and putting the dough in the refrigerator slows that process down you should also plan to pull your dough from the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature at least 2 hours before you shape it now I often find myself needing to bake bread at a location other than where I started it dinner party at a friend's house family reunion camping and in those cases I like to rise my dough in a zip Block Bag again give it about 6 hours of countertop time before you throw it in the fridge then you can move it from the fridge to an ice chest if you're on a road trip somewhere as long as it stays relatively cool and keeps that fermentation process on the slow side then you just got to make sure you pull it for a couple hours to warm to room temperature before you shape second Rise and bait so I'm going to let the time lapse camera take over and I'll see you tomorrow right now our dough is undergoing what is known as the bulk fermentation and this is a term from professional bakeries where the dough for multiple loaves is undergoing its first fermentation in bulk or all together after the bulk fermentation the dough is separated into individual portions for baking Loaves and then it undergos subsequent Rises before baking now we use these terms ferment and Rise interchangeably But Rising is the physical result of a chemical reaction called fermentation and it's very very very important for you to understand in basic terms what fermentation is because it will help you understand when things go wrong and yes this does involve just a little bit of science oh science science is science science science science science is science science and I understand that you may have hated science class in school but your science teacher did not have naughty animation like I do inside our sourdough starter and thus also inside our dough you have a very diverse range of wild yeasts that originated on the grains themselves of wheat as they were growing in the field stayed on those grains through processing into flour and made their way into your starter the first family of beneficial organisms we have in our starter are yeasts now when you bake with this stuff you are using one selected and improved strain of yeast but in your starter you have a host of wild yeasts and yeasts are after one thing sugar and there is a ton of sugar in our Dough because the instant we add water to flour the starches in that flour begin to break down into simple sugars and that's exactly what our yeast are after the instant that they spot that Sugar they go in for the kill and they absolutely Gorge themselves on that sugar but what happens when we Gorge ourselves on food you got it we fart in this case yeast fart carbon dioxide gas and if our gluten Network in the dough is strong enough that carbon dioxide gets trapped inside the gluten Network and as more gas is produced the dough Rises then when we put that dough in the oven those individual bubbles of carbon dioxide gas start to expand just like a hot air balloon and that is what causes our bread to rise and there is one more important metabolic process that happens when yeast eat sugar they pee just like we do only their pee is ethyl alcohol commonly known as booze and the family of yeasts that we use to ferment bread are the exact same family of yeasts that venters Brewers and distillers use to produce alcohol now when you bake with this stuff the ethyl alcohol produced by the yeast just like disseminates into the dough and then when we bake it it evaporates off starting at around 172° F and there's really no residual alcohol left in our bread by the time we eat it but something very different is happening to that ethyl alcohol in the sourdough fermentation process because we have a second family of beneficial organisms living inside our starter billions of bacteria lactobacillus and acetobacter also exist in harmony with the yeast inside of our starter and not only do those little bacteria also love eating simple sugars just like the yeast do they also love to devour ethyl alcohol that's right they are booze hounds and they throw a big old kegger inside our dough as it's fermenting but just like when we drink too much beer the seal gets broken and you got to pee in this case though our bacteria are peeing out acid lactic acid and acetic acid also known as vinegar are their byproduct of consuming the alcohol produced by the yeast and the resulting acids produce that distinct Tang that we know of as sourdough flavor now my method does not produce a very sour dough so if you're one of those people that really doesn't like a super Tangy sour dough this method is absolutely for you if you're one of those folks that really loves an extremely tart sourdough well guess what you're actually misled most of that sour flavor is fake virtually all commercial bread manufacturers augment their sourdough with additional acids to make them taste the way you expect them to taste if you'd like a fascinating eye opener check out my video here why is my sourdough not sour because chances are your expectation of a very tart loaf is from a manufacturer that's just adding acid to their dough but all sourdoughs have an increased level of natural acidity in them and this extra acidity helps the bread be a little bit more tender than do that are made with commercial yeast and unlike ethyl alcohol which evaporates off during the baking process the acetic and lactic acids stay in the bread during the baking process and that extra acidity helps prevent the breads from molding so all sourdough breads naturally have a longer shelf lifetime because they are more resistant to Invasion by mold pretty cool huh it has been 24 hours and we can see there is definitely activity happening in our dough but I'm not quite ready to shape this dough yet you can see where the plastic bag is actually making contact with the dough that we do have a very fine bubble structure existing within this dough however we've had very little carbon dioxide production during that first 24-hour period we've only got a minor bit of inflation in this bag and what we really want to see in terms of carbon dioxide production is an inflation to the bag almost like a balloon now granted our starter had not been fed in 5 months and it was a relatively new fairly weak starter to begin with but I'm doing this to intentionally prove to you guys that you do not have to feed your starter on a regular basis to make a perfect loaf of bread the rule of thumb is that we must wait until the loaf has at least doubled and although this dough has spread out quite a bit I don't feel like it's quite ready for shaping so I'm going to give it another 8 to 12 hours and see what happens then so I gave my dough 12 more hours to FM it and now it is perfect let's take a look the bag is completely inflated with carbon dioxide just like a balloon you'll see lots of big beautiful air bubbles so this dough is ready to shape and bake all right let's talk about baking vessels my favorite way to bake this loaf is in a cast iron Dutch oven I like the fact that cast iron holds heat well it moderates heat well resulting in less potential burning and a more even bake but you do not have to have a cast iron Dutch oven I'm certainly going to show you how you can bake this in a standard 9in loaf pan cast iron loaf pans are also fine and it's even better if you have got two identically sized loaf pans because you can make a little Clos just like this for those of you that have a pulman loaf pan this recipe also works quite well a pulman loaf pan has a little lid that goes on top and as the bread rises in the oven it compresses the bread into a perfect square or rectangle that makes for cool looking and very evenly shaped toast and sandwiches of course this is a lean dough recipe and it's not really the best for sandwiches I have a wonderful sourdough sandwich loaf recipe linked right up here if you're looking to make the perfect bread for sandwiches but I know many of you will want to bake this in a loaf pan and that's perfectly fine I also get a lot of questions about Clay Bakers or cloches and if you have one of those you can absolutely use it with no modifications to the recipe of course there are a lot of different styles of those sometimes they look a little bit more like a dutch oven and sometimes they look a little bit more like a loaf pan so you'll follow whichever method is most appropriate to the shape of your clay Baker in terms of Dutch ovens my favorite size is this 4 quart dutch oven it's about 9 in in diameter and about 42 Ines deep and that's the ideal size for baking this loaf of bread you don't end up with a lot of wasted space inside the Dutch oven Amazon has actually sold out of these multiple times over just because of my videos but I Tred to keep a link in the the video description below of the exact model that I like to use or one that's equivalently sized but if you want a dutch oven that'll do double duty in your kitchen you can bake bread in it but you can also use it for brazing meats or like all day cooked stews you might spring for one that's slightly larger it does not matter whether the Dutch oven is enameled or raw cast iron just understand that when baking at high temperatures like 425° for this recipe is eventually going to weaken the enamel on your Dutch oven and it will start to flake off that's why I don't recommend using a really expensive nice Dutch oven to bake this bread get yourself one for 30 or 40 bucks on Amazon that you can devote to the use and abuse that it will get baking your sourdough bread there are also smaller cheaper 2q Dutch ovs and this recipe will fit inside of one of these but the bread ends up coming out looking sort of like a paneton that Italian holiday bread with the straight sides and then the Dome top and if your bread gets a really good rise you might actually lift the lid off of this container and it'll be deformed a little bit where it pressed on the lid so this 2 to 34 size isn't ideal but it will work regardless of what type of baking vessel you're using you need to prepare it accordingly so that the dough does not stick to the baking vessel and since we're starting in a cold oven that is a higher risk than if we had preheated our Dutch oven make sure you liberally spray or rub oil all along the sides of the Dutch oven and the bottom that are going to come in contact with the dough you can also use parchment but if you've ever had a loaf stick to the inside of the Dutch oven the frustration of that can absolutely make you want to turn to the expense of parchment now I prefer these pre-cut parchment sheets which I'll link in the video description below not only are they super convenient for a regularized sheet tray but when you buy them in bulk sheets like this they're actually cheaper than the roll and there's no human inh hisory that can tear a piece of parchment perfectly off the roll it always rips unevenly right I hate having to get out scissors too if you're going to use parchment some of my wonderful viewers have shared the tip that you crumple it up first stretch it back out and then triple it up again now it has the flexibility to easily conform to the bottom of the pan that way those creases of parchment don't bake into the bread as it expands in the Dutch oven and then you got to cut out chunks of parchment that are baked into the bottom of your loaf as for me I don't waste money with parchment I rarely have an issue of bread dough sticking when it does stick it means I've screwed up my hydration and somehow gotten too much liquid into the dough and if that's the case you got more problems than just the bread sticking to the pan as I've mentioned as long as your starter is sleepy and doesn't get fed on a regular basis there is a great amount of flexibility on this first rise you can wait two four 6 8 10 hours after the bread doubles before you need to shape it and bake it without it over proofing that's not the case if you feed your starter regularly if you have a robust starter and you see this bag looking like this after four to 6 hours you need to shape rise and bake your dough pretty quickly after that point and my little phrase the longer it sits the more flavor you gets that is true if you have have a sleepy starter if you have a robust starter and you try to leave this at room temperature fermenting for a really long time to try to get more flavor out of it you're going to build significant acidity and the acidity actually destroys the gluten structure of the dough rendering it incapable of holding the carbon dioxide in that allows it to rise so if you have a very robust starter and you want to use this method you really need to consider slowing the fermentation down by refrigerating your dough several hours after it's formed keep in mind that your yeast are continually producing carbon dioxide so as this bag inflates the pressure will get higher and higher and if you wait too long guess what's going to happen poof the bag is going to explode and your dough is going to spill out all over wherever it's sitting so do not let your pressure get too high this amount of pressure is actually pretty high but because my starter hadn't been fed in more than 5 months I really wanted to make sure we had a good robust fermentation going to make sure we've got decent rise I'm going to bake today in a conventional size 6q Dutch oven I used my smaller 4 quart which is the ideal size for this recipe in the original demonstration but to show you that it's perfectly fine to use a full-size Dutch oven we're going to use that today I just use oil I don't feel the need to use parchment we're going to start the shaping process by lightly flouring the surface not too much flour we actually want the surface to be a little bit sticky because that's what helps us form a tight pool now if you have risen in a Ziploc bag I recommend you turn the bag over and let the dough sort of detach from the top surface then you can open your bag and dump the bread out onto your work surface you want to make sure that there is plenty of flour on your hands the first step in this process is called pre-shaping I don't really do much pre-shaping I basically just try to come in here and Tuck the edges of the dough under itself to roughly form a little ball like that then I reflower my hands and start the AC ual tightening process now this is extremely difficult to describe but once you actually get the dough in your hands it becomes a little bit more intuitive so if you don't understand exactly how to do this based on my instruction you're going to get the hang of it once you've actually got dough in your hand you're basically going to be running the bottom edge of your hand along the countertop dragging the dough towards you and that actually produces a tightening effect across the top of it then you're going to rotate the dough a little bit and then bring it towards you again so I'll use one hand to rotate then both hands to pull one hand to rotate both hands to pull like this rotate and pull rotate and pull rotate and pull over and over again and then you're going to get a nice tight skin on the top of that dough it should take you less than 10 turns to get this dough really nice and tight and anytime it starts to get sticky get more flour on your hands once you've got that into a nice tight Bol you want to kind of use your hands on the bottom side of it to squeeze that dough together into a nice tight structure and then it goes into your baking vessel now if your dough is just absolutely too sticky to work with that means you're overhydrated you have too much water in your dough and if you're confident you measured your ingredients correctly that extra water is coming from your starter you need to correct your starter's hydration with a couple of big successive feedings and I teach you how to do that in my troubleshooting simple sourdough video but you can save this loaf by kneading a little bit of extra flour into it at this point until it becomes workable if you find as you're trying to get a tight Bool that the dough is just sort of tearing open this means that your dough is over acidified the gluten structure of the dough has been destroyed by high acidity this can happen through very warm fermentations or fermentations that went for too long it can also happen if the bacterial profile of your starter is just very prolific on the acid producing end we solve this through slowing the fermentation down using the refrigerator for the majority of the rise time now we're going to cover our loaf for its second Rise which takes place at room temperature the majority of you are going to want about 90 minutes for the rise do not expect the bread to double during that time because remember we're baking our Loaf in a cold oven so as the oven preheats the bread will finish Rising on its way to baking so we're only looking for about a 50% increase in the volume of the dough before you're ready to score and bake that's going to be 90 minutes or less for the the overwhelming majority of you but since this starter hadn't been fed in 5 months I'm going to air on the side of a little bit longer I'm probably going to let it go 100 or 110 minutes before we score and bake if you've got a very robust starter that doubles your dough in less than 8 hours your second Rise really only needs to be 45 minutes before you put it in the oven and if it takes somewhere between 8 and 12 hours for you to double your second Rise should probably only be an hour but for the majority of you with sleepy starters 90 minutes is just about The Sweet Spot of course if you don't have a dutch oven you can easily B this recipe in a loaf pan a standard 9in loaf pan is perfect for this recipe it's even better if you have two identically sized 9-in loaf pans because then one loaf pan can sit on top of the other which acts similarly to the lid on our Dutch oven it increases the humidity of our baking environment inside the baking vessel which allows the bread to rise higher before it skins over it also results in a better crust but if you don't have two loaf pans that's completely fine this recipe also works great in a pulman loaf pan this is an 8x4 pulman loaf pan and it works pretty well for this amount of dough one thing to keep in mind with the Pullman love pans is that they have little steam holes on the bottom allowing the steam to escape so that the dough can perfectly inflate to the entire inside of the pan so you want to make sure that you're rising and baking your Pullman Loaves on a small baking tray like this just as with the Dutch oven you want to spray or line with parchment to make sure the dough does not stick to the the inside of your baking vessel so we've got our dough here that's been fermenting for about 20 hours and is ready for shaping I have recently migrated to the King Arthur method for loaf shaping it's different from what I grew up with but it's slightly more complex and I enjoy that extra challenge during loaf shaping and it really does make a beautifully formed loaf you can also search YouTube for different ways of forming a loaf but I'm going to teach you the King Arthur method and they also actually have a really wonderful video that goes into the method in detail if you're new to this and it seems a little bit confusing to you now unlike with bu shaping we want a fairly generous amount of flour on our shaping surface now we're going to remove that dough we're going to add a little bit of flour to the surface of the dough and now we basically want to shape the dough into a rectangle that is just a little bit narrower than our loaf pan so we're going to do that by stretching and patting patting helps ensure that the bread is of even thickness all the way across the rectangle you don't want to end up with a loaf of bread that's bigger at one end than the other right so it's important that you've got a fairly even thickness across this loaf also when we're baking in a loaf pan sort of the goal is toast or sandwiches and in that case we definitely don't want any big holes because that's where our mayonnaise or mustard or our Jam is going to spill through right so degassing the loaf like this or pressing out the air bubbles make sure we have a fairly even inner crumb all right looks pretty good pretty even first step is to take the top of that rectangle and Fold It Down 2/3 to 3/4 of the way down the loaf about right there now we're going to give it a nice Pat to make sure there's no air bubbles trapped in there and the two sides are nicely fused together now we're going to do the paper airplane move so we're going to take each corner and fold it down to create a triangle point just like that now we're going to begin the rolling process so we take that point and bring it down towards us push it down to get a good seal and then push back towards the opposite side of the countertop that pushing backwards creates surface tension along the top side of the loaf make sure your hands are well flowered so they don't stick to the dough and we're going to do another roll and push and another roll and push and another roll and push until we get down to that folded seam here next we're going to take these two little ends here and bring them in giving a nice Pat to seal and then we continue the rolling and pushing I like to use the sides of my fingers like this to push back evenly just to make sure we're creating lots of good tension there and then once you get down to where there's only a little bit of a flap left we're going to roll the dough back onto a nicely flowered section of the board and we're going to pull tight and seal just to make sure that that se steam does not come undone as the bread rises in the oven now because our dough was fairly slack you'll notice that we are longer than our actual baking pan that's not a problem we can kind of squoosh it together as we roll it over to put into the bread pan all right and we're going to transfer it here I like to Pat it just to make sure it's well seated and you really need to make sure that that seam is on the very bottom of the loaf pan that is a natural weak point where the bread will want to open up so we need the weight of the loaf sitting right on top of it to make sure that it does not open and split up otherwise that bread will kind of rise this way and unravel itself in the pan now we want to cover either with the other loaf pan a damp kitchen towel plastic wrap something like that and this loaf is going to proof for 90 minutes however these same proofing rules apply if you are using a very robust starter that gets fed frequently and your initial dough doubled in 8 hours or less you only need a 45 minute rise time if your bulk ferment doubled in 8 to 12 hours 60 Minutes is a good second Rise time but for the rest of you 90 minutes is just perfect 90 minutes later we've got about a 50% rise or so and it is time to score easiest way again with scissors you can score three diagonal gashes across the top or you can can go straight down the center in a line or my preferred way to do it is with a razor blade right down the center half an inch to an inch deep and make a quick precise cut so that your dough does not stick to the razor blade and it drags through slowly which deforms the dough when we scored the loaf we held the razor blade at a 90° angle to the countertop straight up and down but when we're scoring a Bool we want to change that angle more towards a 30 to 45° angle we actually don't want to cut in the center we want to move about 2/3 of the way across the loaf and cut it this direction again you want to work definitively and precisely and firmly but it can be a little bit tricky working in the confines of the bowl still it's going to work when we keep our bread so tightly enclosed as it bakes that baking environment closely mimics the steam injected Ovens that professional Bakers use it's important to have a really humid baking environment because as that bread is Rising once it gets to a certain temperature the outside layer of that crust is going to harden and as soon as it hardens the bread isn't going to rise anymore we obviously want to maximize the potential of our rise so the longer that outer skin of the bread stays moist the higher the bread can rise before the crust sets so if you're baking in a loaf pan and don't have a second loaf pan to sit on top as a Clos during the first portion of baking your Bread's crust is going to sit at a smaller size and your crumb will be correspondingly tighter but honestly it's not really a big deal still the more more humid we can keep our baking environment the better our bread will be if you happen to be baking this bread at elevation the nice thing about that is that the closed baking environment stays humid for longer at elevation water evaporates at a lower temperature so you get more evaporation outside of the loaf however because we've got our handy lid on top it is keeping the baking environment moist I have baked this bread at elevations close to 9,000 ft without any modification to the recipe at all if you don't have the top loaf pan on this can just go in absolutely naked I'm going to say this again listen to me very carefully you turn the oven on to 425° F and then you start the timer the timer does not begin from the time the oven reaches temperature just for your own information my oven takes about 20 minutes to heat up to 425° but if yours takes more or less it's no problem you are going to learn the perfect baking times for your oven the more you bake this loaf also if your oven has a convection setting convection isn't really beneficial to us here because for the majority of the baking time the bread is enclosed and protected from the air that is circulating throughout the convection oven and after 45 minutes the lids come off 15 more minutes and 15 minutes later they're done all right we are GNA get this out onto a cooling rack y' this is a perfect loaf of sourdough bread from a starter that had not been fed in five months and I know from previous experience that this bread is going to have a lot more flavor because these starving starters that ferment for a much longer time produce really intense complex flavor in their loaves now it is taking all of my willpower not too tiar into this loaf right now it's so beautiful and smells so incredible but you must remember not to slice into bread that is fresh out of the oven and that is because the crumb is still very damp and moist and if I slice into this with a bread knife that crumb is going to gum up on the knife and then the knife is just going to chew through that loaf and destroy the crumb you must wait at least 30 minutes before you cut into this loaf if you can't wait 30 minutes before tearing into it then you need to literally tear into it tear it apart with your hands tearing the loaf and then dipping it in olive oil or whatever will actually work just fine as long as you don't burn your fingers but to get a Proper Slice the cooler the bread is the better at the restaurant we would fully cool the loaves for a couple of hours slice them into individual portions and then rewarm the bread just before passing it at the table that is the smartest thing to do folks there are a lot of sourdough instructors out out there and even professional bakers that insist that the only way you can make a loaf of sourdough bread is with a hyperactive freshly fed starter well what the heck is this folks those people are thinking like this lots of yeast leaving power to get a high rise but then they also know that sourdough is supposed to be more flavorful and we get more flavor from long slow fermentations so after they make you feed your starter regularly which involves wasteful discard then they make you put your dough into the refrigerator to slow that process down well why didn't they just start with sleepy sluggish starter to begin with because it clearly makes a gorgeous loaf of bread folks this complexity and frustration that you're finding is all in the quest of big holes from high hydration and we've been over this I personally think that it is misled to promote the Aesthetics of a loaf of bread over the flavor and the ease of its production yes there is a time and a place for high hydration sourdough English muffins faka Spanish glass bread but for your everyday bread that should be easy to produce look beautiful and taste delicious uh-uh let's take a closer look and listen to this loaf just before we slice it that's got a wonderful crackle to it the amount of Browning on a loaf is really sort of a personal preference your loaf doesn't have to be this brown but for some people looking at this loaf they might think it's not quite Brown enough if your loaf comes out of the oven fairly pale after this full hour of cooking it could be that your oven bakes cool and if that's the case you can just bump your baking temperature up 450° conversely if it's a little bit too dark for you lower your temperature 10 or 15° for the next bake if your bread is burnt on the bottom your oven bakes hot you may need to put a baking tray or two underneath the Dutch oven before it goes into the oven and that will provide a little bit more thermal mass and even out the heating on the bottom you can also try lowering your oven's baking temperature by 10 or 15° on your next bake all right let's slice this baby open and see how she tastes beautiful crumb very nice light moist and it smells incredible and now for the taste m [Laughter] M that is good bread you guys compared to that first loaf that we baked the flavor of this is deep and Rich and complex and intense the crumb is tender and moist but the crust is light and Flaky and crispy I think you would be hardpressed to bake a loaf of bread that tastes any better than this and we only spent 10 minutes on it before we wrap up I want to address a few questions that I get get really really frequently that will help you deal with the aftermath of the bread once it is out of the oven and cooled for slicing the very best option you have is an offset serrated bread knife now if you were a knife snob a bread knife is not the thing that you want to spend money on serrated knives can never be sharpened again to the same Perfection that they are when they arrive from the factory so never spend more than about $30 on a bread knife and you can get them for cheaper than that and that knife will last you for several years of regular slicing before it's time to buy a new one my favorite bread knife is linked in the video description below if you want to get the one that I use I use it all the time and it lasts a long time before it needs to be replaced the offset shape is particularly important because the blade sits lower than your hand this allows you to cut all the way down to the surface of the cutting board without mashing your fingers on The Cutting Board itself so whatever knife you get make sure that it is an offset these also work great for thinly slicing tomatoes now when slicing your bread it is never as easy to slice as it is after it has fully cooled on baked day so in the event you have bread left over at the end of the day I recommend you go ahead and slice the entire loaf that also makes it super and quick to grab a slice in the coming days after you've baked the bread you don't have to get out your knife again the best way I have found to preserve the freshness of bread over several days after baked day is using beeswax infused cloth I link to this in the video description but I have discovered that this keeps the bread nice and moist without it becoming sweaty which happens when you wrap it in plastic wrap or store it in a Ziploc bag and the bread stays fresh for several days after baking the cool thing about this beeswax cloth is that it sort of sticks to itself but it doesn't stick to the bread so you can actually form your own custom bag that completely wraps the bread meaning it's not going to lose very much moisture at all to evaporation but if there's residual warmth inside the bread it's not going to create condensation and like steam the bread into a sogginess the way it would in a plastic bag these beeswax cloths aren't super cheap but they'll last you for a year or even longer if you take care of them after you use them once just wipe them off and if they need a little bit of cleaning you can clean them with cool soapy water the one thing that you must never ever ever ever do is put bread in the refrigerator the refrigerator ruins bread bread the refrigerator stals bread exponentially faster than it does at room temperature this is because starch which makes up the majority of flour is actually crystallin in form if you look at it under the microscope now after we hydrate that starch with water and bake it in the oven those crystals tend to sort of explode and trap that water but they're desperate to return to their original crystallin shape and so as the bread sits those starch crystals move back toward each other and restructure themselves in crystallin form and as they do it they push out moisture guess what does this way way faster than room temperature storage the refrigerator guess what slows that way way down even more so than keeping it at room temperature the freezer so if you want to serve your bread again in 2 or 3 days wrap it and put it in the freezer otherwise the second best spot for it is on the countertop and it should never ever ever ever ever go into the refrigerator if you've it on the countertop wrapped in this beeswax plastic it'll be good if you taste it on day one or day two but the secret trick to making bread taste fresh several days after it's baked is to rewarm it rewarming it rehydrates those crystals they absorb the moisture again from the moisture around them and the moisture in the air and bread tastes almost as fresh as the day it was baked so rewarm or toast your bread to bring life back into it whether it's been sitting on the countertop or in the freezer but now ever in the fridge again folks the printable recipe for this video is on my website ultimate foodgeek ccom you can expand the video description and Link right over to it and there's also everything you could possibly want detailed in that video description from the full recipe to all of the toys I've used in this video if you have found this video helpful interesting or even mildly entertaining please give me a like and a subscribe you have no idea how much those subscriptions help me out if you have questions feedback or need a little bit of help with this method please comment below I read every single comment submitted to my channel and I try to respond to anybody that needs help or input folks it's been a wild four years and I've got so much more to share with you in the kitchen not only everything related to sourdough but beyond just flour and water as well as beyond the boundaries of my kitchen we have a lot of Adventures to share together so make sure you subscribe and I look forward to seeing you on the next video I am Ben star the ultimate food geek thanks for watching and have a great day