Sourdough bread.

Recently I purchased a sourdough starter  on line (yes somebody has a sourdough starter business).

Making sourdough bread is a love affair. It needs carful attention and encouragement to bloom into its full potensial; a beautiful corny loaf of bread. It comes out with a different personality every time  I make it, which makes baking bread so much fun.

I make bread approximately every two weeks and do not feed the starter in between. I even forgot about it for a couple of months , and was able to revive it after scraping off a little bit of mold.

You can mix any kind of flour. I like spelt, oat and rye in different proportions. Sunflowers add a nice crunch.

This bread is baked in a  pre heated cast iron pot.

Following is the basic steps.

Day 1.

Take the sourdough starter out of the fridge . I keep it in a mason jar.

 Add 2 tbs of flour and 2-3 tbs of water. Let sit over night.












Day 2

 It is bubbling!


Add more flour and water in the morning

 This is how it will look like when you get home from work.

 Scrape it in to a bowl

 And add 2 cups of water and 2 cups of flour. Let sit over night. The dough should be fairly loose.












Day 3.

 In am add 2 more cups of flour and a little bit of salt of make a semi firm dough.

This is a good time to take off a lump of dough for the next time you are making bread.

In pm it will look something like this. It is ready to be formed into a loaf.

 Add seeds, nuts, oat, dried fruits; what ever you want.

 And form it into a loaf. Make a nice pattern so that the bread does have room to expand without ripping into an ugly  looking ravine.

 Cover the baking bowl with parchment paper and carefully ease the bread into it.



Let it raise in the fridge over night.







Day 4.

Let the bread sit for 3-4 hours in room temperature.

45 minutes before you intend to bake it, turn your oven on 425F  and heat up the cast iron pot.

Be careful when you remove it. Use the parchment paper to lift the bread from the baking bowl into the cast iron pot. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes.

 After 30  minutes take of the lid and let it bake for another 20 minutes.
Insert a thin stick to check if the bread is done, if dough sticks, bake for longer. It is done when the stick comes out clean.

Take the bread out of the cast iron pot using the parchment paper.

Cool on a rist.

I usually cannot wait until the bread is completely cooled off ( I probably would not pass the marshmallow test) before I cut into it.











If you need a starter, let me know.