This rustic sourdough bread is delicious and beautiful with that classic sourdough taste.
The recipe is easy to understand and doesn’t require you to weigh anything. This is sourdough simplified and it’s the only way I do sourdough. I hope y’all enjoy many tasty loaves of bread with this recipe.
Equipment Needed to Bake Sourdough Bread:
You can bake sourdough bread with no fancy equipment. Start with what you have! You can use a bowl or colander with a dish cloth for your banneton basket, you can bake it in any casserole dish if you don’t have a Dutch oven, and you can score your loaves with a sharp knife. You can even bake it on a cookie sheet. But if you want to invest in your sourdough journey, here are a couple items that do make the process easier and I do think they help elevate your bread quality.
- Dutch Oven – my favorite ones are this one and this one
- Banneton Baskets – this set is beautiful and it comes with a dough scraper and scoring lame
- Scoring Làme – this was the first one I ever had and I still like it
- Silicone Baking Mat – this is the one I have and like
The first step to making sourdough bread is feeding your starter the night before you want to bake bread. If you don’t have a starter, you can buy one online, get some from a friend, or make your own! I wrote a whole post on making your own starter and you can find that here. It’s not hard, it just takes flour, water, and patience.
I like using starter that has been fed within the past 12-24 hours. It doesn’t necessarily have to be at its peak rise to work well. I feed my starter with 1 cup all purpose flour and 3/4 cup lukewarm water.
I usually start my bread in the morning sometime or anytime. Just start it about 7 hours before you want to go to bed. Lol!
In a mixer or mixing bowl, mix together the flour, water, starter, and salt. Mix together until just combined and the flour is all absorbed and then let the dough rest for 15 minutes or longer if you have the time and want too. After 15 minutes, go ahead and knead the dough for about 5 minutes or until the dough is smooth and supple. At that point transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. The plastic wrap keeps the moisture in and keeps the dough from drying out. Now you will let the dough rise for five hours or more if needed until it’s doubled in size and light and airy, filled with air bubbles. Every hour or so you’ll do stretch and folds on the dough. I sometimes put my dough by the fireplace to give it extra warmth and rising power.
After doing the stretch folds and letting the dough rise for five hours, it’s time to shaped the loaves and then you can either bake them right away or put them in banneton baskets and let them ferment in the fridge overnight. I do like the added sourdough flavor and the texture from letting them sit in the fridge.
In the morning, you’ll put your Dutch oven into your cold oven and let them heat up while you preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Pull your loaves out of the fridge and remove them from the bannetons onto a floured piece of parchment paper or baking mat. Score them as desired. Scoring is fun and a chance for your creativity to shine.
Once the oven is preheated, place the loaves in the hot Dutch oven, cover, and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the lids and bake for 15 more minutes uncovered. Remove from oven and let cool. Of course, I rarely restrain myself from cutting an end piece off while it’s still piping hot, slathering it with butter, and devouring it. It’s pure heaven!
Once it’s completely cooled off, I will wrap it in plastic wrap to store it and keep it from drying out.
The process of feeding your sourdough starter and making the dough with the stretch and folds and proofing and shaping of the loaves is very therapeutic and soothing. Slow down and embrace the process.
Happy Baking!
~Rachel Ballinger 🥖💕
Rustic Sourdough Bread
Ingredients
- 3 cups flour
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 3/4 cup active sourdough starter
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together in the bowl of a stand mixer (or large mixing bowl) just until combined and then let sit for 15 minutes.
- Using a dough hook, knead for 5 minutes. If making by hand, knead for 8 to 10 minutes.
- Transfer to a lightly oiled medium-sized bowl, seam side up. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 5 hours, turning and folding the dough about every hour or so.
- At this point you can either continue with these directions or form a firm loaf on a floured baking surface, put it in a sourdough banneton basket, cover, and place in fridge overnight pulling it out in the morning and then continuing with these directions.
- Plop dough out of bowl onto a lightly floured surface and gently shape into a ball. Place it on a square of generously floured parchment paper. Make sure there’s a good coating of flour on the top, as this will make scoring easier. If you refrigerated it overnight, just plop the dough gently out of the banneton onto the parchment paper, no shaping needed.
- Set an enameled, cast iron dutch oven into a cold oven and turn heat to 450 degrees.
- When the oven is preheated, slash the top of the loaf with a bread láme or serrated knife (in 2-3 places) and transfer it to the hot pot by holding the edges of the parchment paper.
- Replace the hot lid and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the lid and continue baking for another 15 minutes, until golden brown.
- Remove from oven and remove bread from Dutch oven and let cool on parchment paper at least 30 minutes before cutting.
