If you've ever been interested in baking sourdough but got immediately turned off by unbearably long and complicated recipes, this article is for you.
When I first began my sourdough journey during COVID-19 (yes, I'm a living cliche), I went down all the wormholes, read all the forums and basically just thoroughly confused myself with overly complicated baking information.
I eventually found a routine that worked to produce a decent loaf, but as time went on, I kept wondering – is all this palaver really necessary to make bread?
Eventually I realised that very few of the steps you read online are actually 100% necessary to produce a decent loaf of bread
The intricate timings, the multiple sets of stretch-and-folds, the cold fermenting, the proofing. It's all a-bloody-lot when you've got two kids, a job and a house to run.
So gradually I started cutting corners. And I kept on cutting. Until eventually I realised that very few of the steps you read online are actually 100% necessary to produce a decent loaf of bread.
My family devours a loaf every couple of days, so I just wanted to produce a homemade one that tasted good enough to be accepted by my kids.
I don't need my bread to win any awards for the perfect crumb, the ideal sourdough 'ear' (that fancy-looking flap of crust on the top of the loaf) or the most artisanal sourdough bubbles.
If you're in the same boat, here's my lazy guide to sourdough.
What you'll need
Kitchen stuff
- A bowl
- Kitchen scales
- A 4L Dutch oven or a standard loaf tin (glass or stainless steel)
Ingredients
- 500g flour (you can use organic flour or baker's flour or just the cheapest plain flour from the supermarket)
- 350ml water
- 8g salt (any kind)
- 60g sourdough starter*
Method
- Grab your cold sourdough starter out of the fridge.
- Add ingredients to the bowl and mix until it forms a shaggy ball (start mixing with a spoon then finish with your hands to get the last dry bits into the ball). Chuck a wet tea towel or beeswax wrap over it and leave it in the kitchen for half an hour or so (doesn't have to be precise).
- Wet your hands and do one set of stretch-and-folds in the bowl (why bother taking it out and dirtying your bench?).
To do a stretch-and-fold, all you need to do is pick up a side of the dough, stretch it out and upwards a little, and fold it over into the middle. Rotate the bowl (or your hands) 90 degrees and repeat three more times until you have folded all four "sides".
If this explanation makes no sense, just google a short video and it should become clear. Stretch-and-folds are really easy and this process should take under 20 seconds. At this point you can mix in fancy things like olives, cheese or linseeds, but I prefer to keep it simple. - Leave the bowl on the bench all day long while you live your life without thinking about dough at all. Depending on the temperature in your home, this can be anywhere from 5–6 hours on a hot summer's day, to 10–12 hours on a cold winter's day.*
But there's plenty of wiggle room and you can always leave it for an hour or two longer or shorter if it's more convenient for you. It's ready to bake when the dough is nicely puffed up (if you leave it too long, the puff collapses and it won't bake well).
At this time of year, I usually mix my loaf at breakfast time, around 8am, then bake in the evening after putting the kids to bed at around 6–7pm. - When you settle down to watch Netflix after dinner, preheat your oven to 230 degrees, wet your hands and scoop your ball of dough out of the bowl, tucking any raggedy bits under the bottom to make it more of a smooth, tight dome shape on the top (again, do this in your hands or in the bowl – no dirty benches here.)
Chuck your ball into a baking paper-lined Dutch oven and pop the lid on. If you're using a loaf tin, grease it or line with baking paper and then roughly pull the dough into a kind of log shape instead of a ball. Pop it into your lined tin for an hour or so before baking. - If baking in a Dutch oven, cook at 230 degrees for 30 minutes with the lid on, then 30 minutes with the lid off. For an open loaf tin, bake for 45 minutes at 200 degrees.
*Note that this guidance is based on the climate where I live in North Coast NSW. If you live in a significantly warmer or cooler climate, you'll need to tweak the times to suit you. But the idea is the same – find out how many hours it needs to puff up and bake it then.
Healthy and cheap
My original motivation for making my own bread was to avoid all the additives and preservatives in traditional supermarket bread. I live in a small town where there is nowhere to buy real, fresh sourdough, so if I wanted 'real' bread, I had to make my own.
But along the way I also realised my loaf was a hell of a lot cheaper than store-bought too. If using the cheapest plain flour, you can produce a loaf for about 60 cents.
Nowadays I splash out on organic flour that I buy in bulk which ends up costing about $2 a loaf – still a significant saving on buying a decent loaf of bread at the supermarket or bakery.
It also takes less than 24 hours from start to finish, so in the morning I simply take stock of how much bread we have left after breakfast and school lunches are done and decide whether I need to mix up a batch of dough for tomorrow's bread.
I actually find it more convenient than having to factor in emergency trips to the supermarket for tomorrow's loaf. Mixing up a loaf is way faster than a supermarket run.
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