Stephens Sourdough Recipe
There's more to us than just making photos and frames. During Covid-19 lockdown I've rediscovered my love of baking bread.
Here's a simple recipe for making a sourdough loaf of bread. It makes a great base for experimenting with. All that is required are a few ingredients and a bit of patience and luck. I've heard it said that sourdough bread is as much an art as it is a science.
First of all you need a sourdough starter.
This takes approx three plus days to make. Simply mix 1/2 a cup of flour and 1/2 of water to form a stiff paste like mix. Place in a warm spot ( I put mine on top of the fridge near the back to catch the warm air off the condenser). Feed every day with equal parts of flour and water. I use about 1/4 of a cup of each. After a three plus days it will start foaming on the top and will take on a sweet yeasty aroma. To test to see if your starter is ready to use simply drop a few blobs of this into water, if it floats you're good to move on to baking.
Now for the Bread making part.
Ingredients:
- 500g of white flour plus a bit more for kneading etc
- 300g of active sourdough starter
- 250ml of water
- 10g of brown sugar
- 8g of salt
- Oil for greasing baking pans/dishes
Method:
- Mix together the flour, sourdough starter and water in a bowl. After this is mixed well add the sugar and salt. Either continue to mix in a breadmaker or turn out onto the bench and knead until the windowpane effect is achieved (approx 10mins plus).
- Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and let it prove for 2.5 to 3 hours. I pop mine in the hot-water cupboard for this. But warning - keep an eye on it as It can overflow if extremely active starter is used.
- Turn the dough out onto a clean surface and knock back. Sometimes at this point I mix in various seeds like pumpkin, sunflower, linseed and sesame (approx a couple of tablespoons of each). After knocking back either divide the dough in two for two smaller loaves or leave as one for a massive loaf. Place the loaf/loaves in a heavily floured cloth and leave to rise for another 2.5 to 3 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 230 degrees Celsius. Place a container of water in the oven to provide steam while baking. Turn your loves onto a baking tray or pizza stone (on the pic above I used a casserole dish so it keep its shape), score the tops with a knife two or three times and bake for 35-40 minutes until golden and a good crust has formed. Baked loaves will also sound hollow when tapped.Now enjoy and post your photos of the successfully outcomes.
Stephen Feldon
Hi Carol,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. The window-pane effect is when you stretch the dough and it holds well producing a very thin, almost see through, piece of dough before breaking. As the name suggests like a window pane.
Yes I failed to mention a good 10 minute knead or longer would help to achieve this.
I look forward to seeing a picture of your result if you’d like share on Facebook, tagging Photo and Framed in it.
Thanks again, regards – Stephen
Carol Dyer
Stephen, what do you mean by the window pane effect? I’ve never heard of that in relation to bread making. Perhaps it would be helpful to say knead for 10 minutes…
Bread looked lovely
Carol