Easiest Sourdough Bread

About this bread:

The perfect sourdough bread has three things: a good crust, a chewy texture, and a tangy, sour flavor.

Sourdough bread is inexpensive to make. You just need flour, water, salt, olive oil (some recipes omit this) and the key ingredient, starter.

Developing a sourdough starter seems like the hard part. It takes at least a week and involves a great deal of observing and evaluating. I never fully understood what I was supposed to see, and I hated dumping out half the starter twice a day. My first few starters gave up around Day 4, and I ended up with a mucky, grayish goo. 

My friend, Kathy, offered to give me some starter and I considered it. But it nagged at me. Somehow it felt like giving up. The compulsion to make my own was too overwhelming. It’s one of those pursuits that non-sourdough enthusiasts wouldn’t understand, like locating that rare stamp, or climbing Mt. Everest. 

But once you have your starter, it’s almost indestructible and you can keep it in the refrigerator indefinitely. People have them for years. They even name them (mine are Adam and Eve). Having a name might help your family or roommates understand why the jar of bubbly dough is so precious.

If you aren’t passionate about starting your own sourdough starter, borrow some from a friend or order from Amazon. 

Now the good part…baking the bread

Baking a satisfactory loaf of sourdough took at least 100 tries before it consistently turned out well. It was frustrating to say the least. Some were decent, then others were tasteless. I read other recipes, followed their suggestions exactly because they said it was imperative, but still I wasn’t satisfied. Truly I’m not sure what they did that I wasn’t doing, why my bread wasn’t working out, and by this time I’m quite an experience bread baker. Bread bakers are like personal trainers or politicians: they all swear they have the one perfect formula for success but you have to follow their steps exactly.

I almost gave up since have plenty of yeast, and regular bread only takes three hours at the most. Then my son brought home a small mediocre loaf of sourdough bread that he paid $6.00 for, and I was back in the kitchen, trying again like climbing Everest.

So here is what I know:

• tough bread means too much flour or overworked dough, so skipped most of the kneading.
• fat like olive oil or butter increases moisture because it prevents water from evaporating during baking.
• long slow proving in cool temperature develops flavor.
• when you add sugar, the loaves burned easier if they are baked at high heat.
• higher temperature makes a thicker, crisper crust.
• salt definitely adds flavor

Ingredient:

Here are the basic ingredients for one loaf, but  I always double the recipe–one loaf to eat and one to freeze. It’s too much work for a single loaf.

• About 1/2 cup of starter.
• 4 cups of bread flour
• 1 tablespoons of salt
• 1.5 cups of water
• ¼ cup olive oil
• Optional- cornmeal for baking

Instructions:

1. Mix the starter with water and half the flour, all the salt and olive oil until you have a thick batter.
2.  Add enough additional flour to get a dough that just barely sticks to your hands–yes this might seem confusing but it’s not an exact science. Too little flour and you’ll have a sticky dough that is hard to work, loaves that are a bit flat, but tastes amazing. Too much flour will result in a tight, dense loaf that may still taste nice.
3. Give it a couple quick kneads to be sure all the flour is fully incorporated.
4. Cover and let dough sit for 30 minutes to autolyse. (This is a new word invented probably by bread bakers that means the ingredients are fully absorbed.)
5. Give the dough a few ‘stretch and folds’.
6. Place in a greased, covered bowl and let rise for about 4 hours, or until it has risen about 75%
7. Place the covered bowl in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours. This long proving period develops more flavor. 
8. Form into loaves. Place on a baking tray that has been sprinkled with cornmeal– or just place on a plain baking tray covered with parchment paper. 
9. Let rest for about 1 hour.
10. Bake at 475 F. degree hot oven for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 425 F. for another 15 minutes. It should have a good brown color and sound hollow when tapped. I use a thermometer to poke in the middle. When it reads 205 degrees, it’s done.

*Note on starter:

If you don’t already have a starter, you need to make that first and it takes at least a week. The longer you have it, the more developed the flavor. See if you can get some from someone else. Once you have some, you just keep adding flour and water to get it fed. If you want to make your own starter, try this.

• Sourdough from Tassajara Bakery . This bread uses yeast, so it’s a bit of a cheat. Also, it’s hard to get a good crust on it and it tastes more like Sheepherder bread than a San Francisco sourdough.