Rustic Sourdough Bread
This is a delicious and beautiful bread 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. 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 enjoy the process. Happy Baking! 🥖
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.