Bread Recipes

Can I Make Sourdough Bread with No Baking Equipment?

Click the link below for your free PDF downloads of my Sourdough Baking Schedules that I used in this video! http://bit.ly/4-bread-checklists

So I packed up my car and left Brooklyn but had no room for any of my sourdough baking equipment… Oh yeah, I also left my sourdough starter back in the studio! But that certainly wont stop me from making sourdough bread in quarantine. In this video I will show you how to make an active sourdough starter from scratch in just 1 week and give you all the skills necessary to make sourdough bread without any standard home baking equipment.

Sourdough Recipe
4 Cups of All Purpose Flour (18oz)
2 Cups of Whole Wheat Flour (9oz)
3.5 Cups of Water (28 Fl oz)
1 Cup of Active Sourdough Starter (4-5oz)
2 Tablespoons Salt

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https://www.prohomecooks.com/post/i-t…

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Original of the video here

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Video Transcription

[Music]right so welcome to my third kitchen inthree videos it’s been a crazy few weeksbut I should be settling in here for afew weeks a few months I don’t knowwhat’s going on to be honest and today Iwanted to cover something very importantbecause I’ve been seeing so many peoplemaking bread just cooking in general ifthere’s one good thing about thecoronavirus it’s more people have timeto cook or more people are home and theycan dedicate time to making food fromscratch and there’s no food you can makemore from scratch than bread you’retaking yeast flour and water and saltand you’re making magic with thoseingredients and so many people have beentagging me on my Instagram at like byMike G and it’s been amazing to see yourbread progress how many people aregetting into sourdough for the firsttime I love seeing those bread pics inmy inbox but unfortunately I can’tanswer all your questions a lot ofpeople are asking you troubleshootingquestions about sourdough and it’s justtoo much and it’s also the reason why Imake these videos and why I made a wholecourse on sourdough bread to answerthese exact questions but today I wantedto do something different because I hadto move out of my apartment in like aday and I packed my car full to the brimand I couldn’t fit any of my sourdoughequipment including my sourdough starterso I wanted to do a complete tutorialshowing you how you can make sourdoughbread one without a sourdough starter sowe’ll be making that from scratch andtwo without any standard sourdoughbaking equipment so generally whenyou’re making sourdough you want a scaleyou want a Dutch oven to bake it in youwant a bread lame or some type of reallysharp scoring blade you definitely wanta proofing basket or a banna tin and I’mtrying to think if there’s anything elsethat I use there might be like a fewlittle things that I have back in thestudio that come up but I don’t have anyof that equipment which I thought was abummer at first but then I realizedthere’s pie so many beginners out therethat are getting into sourdough thatcan’t go to the store right now that oneat least attempt something at home sothis video should be a great gatewayinto seeing if you want to invest insome stuff if you try it you like theprogress then you want to invest to makereally good sourdough but hopefullywe’ll at least get some pretty goodsourdough today so unfortunately mysourdough starter did not make it fromBrooklyn it is sitting in my studiofridge right now potentially dying avery slow and cold death but the truthis I have sourdough starters died on meyou know from time to time it’s reallynot that big a deal people thinksourdough starter needs to be passed onfrom generations or you need to buy itonline but they are so easy to make allyou’re doing is mixing flour and watertogether and you’re creating the perfectcolony for yeast and bacteria to thrivethere’s yeast and bacteria all over yourhouse we’re made up of yeast andbacteria and by mixing flour and watertogether you’re creating the perfectplace for those to really thrive andcolonize and multiply so all you have todo to start your starter off is mixflour and water so I’m gonna take aclean jar and add a few scoops of flourand a little bit of water to create amixture somewhere around a pancake and acake batter and just let that sit for 24hours it’s after one day you can alreadysee some bubbles its liquidy right nowwhich is fine because it’s sitting for24 hours totally natural so what I’mgonna do is not discard anything I’mjust gonna feed this with just a littlemore flour and a little more water andjust let that go for another 24 hoursall right just woke up this is day 3 youcan see a ton of bubble activity butwhen I smell it it’s still not sour andthat’s totally natural we’re building acolony of yeast and bacteria which aregonna keep developing those sour notesbut that’s the last thing that’s gonnacome probably a week down the lineyou’ll start smelling more of the sournotes but it’s good that at least wehave the bubble activity we know there’ssomething forming right now so I’m justgonna keep on feeding this thingcheck this out this is day four of mystarter people think it’s tough to makea starter at home did you see how easyit was super bubbly super fluffy it roseby at least double you can see all thosecarbonation bubbles in there so what I’mgonna do is I’m gonna remove half ofthis and then feed it again and thenI’ll start doing continual feedingstwice a day and I’m starting to get sournotes too after three days which is agreat sign so I think and maybe two daysI’ll be ready to bake so less than aweek we could have sourdough bread ifyou’ve seen any of my other sourdoughvideos you know I don’t like wastingextra starter you don’t need to throw itin the trash this is good fermenteddough right here oh well not just leaveit like that was crazyso oil a little bit of sesame seesalt so now that this is emptied intothe pan and flying I can just do aregular feed in the best right there theabsolute bat all right today is the dayI’ve been feeding this thing for about aweek since I’ve gotten here and it’sbeen pretty active over the last fewdays and it’s the weekend even thoughthere really aren’t weekends at thispoint in life but it feels like theright time to make bread so what I’mgonna do is feed this thing I’m gonnapour about half of this off make anotherpancake and give this thing a solid offeeding and just let that activate itfor a few hours all right so you can seein there there’s some bubbles I’ve lefta bow I would say that’s half a cup ofstarter you can leave less you can leavemore in total I need about a hundred andfifty grams which might be around a cupof active starter and I’ve been doingthis for a while so I can eyeballsomething around there but you know I’mjust trying to get close just you cansee that is my final consistency rightthere really fifth pancake a cake batterconsistency so a lot of you have alreadybeen taking advantage of my sourdoughcheck with schedules right here I’mgonna be using the Flex bake today thisis the weekend one or the freelance onewhen you have time in your home and mostof you are home so this is great forright now but I do have four otherchecklists for all different types ofschedules so you can click this linkright here for this link to get yourfree checklist PDF but let’s take a lookat this so we just fed the started itsays 8:00 a.m. and actually it’s 7:45 sowe’re pretty much right on schedulethere which is great now generally astarter takes four to seven hours toactivate and I know thatbig timeframe but this is fermentationit depends on the temperature in yourhouse the activity or your starter thenext step is auto lease so we have agood chunk of time in there so I’m goingto go for a little run get out ofquarantine and I’ll put a rubber band onthe sourdough starter and put atime-lapse on there and we’ll see whathappens over the next few hours[Music]check that out pretty solid right therenice and bubbly so right now it’s 1036which is pretty much on point with wellwe’re a little behind it I think thisactivated a little quicker and alwaysuse your senses smell it look at itcheck for rounding on the top of thestarter before you just start followinginstructions because every environmentis completely different so now we’regonna auto lease the bread for about 45minutes or an hour and then this will beperfectly ready to go for our go so whenit comes to baking sourdough bread ascale is your best friend especiallywhen it comes to getting specific withbakers percentages in this case I don’thave a scale but I do feel like everyBaker should know how to make sourdoughfrom feel and it’s great to havespecific measurements in the beginningbut over time you will get used to thefeel of things the look of things andyou can basically hone in on hydrationlevels of your dough just by looking atit just by feeling it and that’s ofcourse what we’re gonna be doing todayI’m gonna be giving you cup measurementsand the ounce conversion just as a guidefor all the beginners out there if youneed a reference point and at this stagewe are Auto leasing our dough which isjust starting the gluten bonding processyou want to do it at least 45 minutesbefore you add your starter to the doughand the measurements I’m gonna go withfor my sourdough bread is three cups ofall-purpose flour and then two cups ofwhole wheat so I’m gonna do a nice mixof both whole-wheat and all-purpose andthen for the water I’m gonna go withjust about three and a halfcups of water so you can see that thatis way too wet I would not want to dealwith that dough that’s almost like acake batter we’re looking for somethingin between like a pizza dough and a cakebatter right in the middle so I’llprobably just add one more cup ofall-purpose flour and see where thatgets all right there we go so that ismuch better I would say that’s around 75to 80% hydration if I had to guess andthis will break down to to sour doughblows and you can see it’s super stickyright now but remember that’s the pointof this auto-release process over thenext 45 minutes as the gluten proteinsstart to bond together this dough willstart to transform over time so we’vegot at least for 45 minutes and I justwant to show you now we’re ready to addthis starter you can see it’s sort ofdomain up you see that I get a betterview there you go it’s slightly roundedon top which is a good sign that oursour dough is still activating once itstarts to fleeting and it starts goingconcave right that’s the word concavestarts going down that means your sourdough started running out of food andyou want to add it to your dough beforeit runs out of food all right you cansee texture starting to change already alittle smoother already less sticky solet’s go in with the salt justeyeballing this you always want moresalt than you think when it comes tobread it’s not just like a few pinchesit’s a little more grassall that in real quick now our starterand for this it’s just like a glob it’sthe best way I can describe it that wasprobably about 150 to 200 grams which iswhat you’re going for and now what we’regonna do is just fold in our starter andthe dough is already feeling so niceit’s a good sign that we got ourhydration levels right okay we’ll letthat sit for about 30 minutes and we’llstart the stretch and fold process allright so we are entering in to thestretch and fold process and when you’remaking sourdough bread you’re notneeding it like normal bread because youwant to keep that air in your bread soyou get those nice bubbles so over thenext two two-and-a-half hour periodwe’re gonna be just gently stretchingthe dough and folding it over stretchingand folding it over just like thismotion you just want to do it a fewtimes until your dough starts to almosttighten up the gluten is gonna tightenup a bit that’s when you know okay we’reready to let this dough rest for another45 minutes then we’ll go at it again allright round two[Music][Music]right around a three-fight texturestarting to get a little nicer you canfeel it alright round four finalstruction fold I just want to show yousomething real quickthis is called the windowpane test ifyou stretch out the dough let’s see thatsee how far I can stretch it out it’s agood sign if you can stretch it superthin like you can almost see through ita good sign that the gluten iswell-developed so getting the properbulk rise is something that people messup a lot I would say it’s one of thetrickier parts to Oh check this out holdon Dickie nice world sweet potatobrownies maybe one day I’ll get thatrecipe back to the bulk rice so yespeople get this wrong a lot they don’tgive the dough proper time to bulk risecuz a lot of recipes will tell you youknow three four hours and you see onthis sheet I say two to six hours andright now in here it’s a little coolerand even a temperature change of two orthree degrees could totally slow downyour bulk rise by an hour or two so it’sreally something that you have to lookfor and I’m just gonna keep an eye onthis every hour see how much it’s risingwe’re not trying to get this to doublein size this isn’t baker’s yeast but wedo want to gain some volume we want tosee an airiness to the dough and overallit will just it will feel a little moresubstantial feel fluffy and if it’s lateat night you could totally just throwthis in the fridge now and let it bulkrise in the fridge overnight slowly andthen roll it out in the morning which istotally fine so you can adapt and that’swhat the schedules are for I kind ofgive you the methods for adapting withwhatever timings you’re dealing with intheall right so check that outlook at that jiggle it’s been how longhas it been been a good four and a halffive hours but I really wanted to giveit some time to develop and you can seejust has like a voluptuousness feel thatdo you see that I can feel that allright it just has a jiggle to it it’ssuper smooth a lot of people under proofat this point because they’re used toBaker’s G’s doubling in like one hourand this just takes so much longer sojust make sure you give it some time butwe’re ready to move on to the shapingprocess so we’re gonna appreciate theselet them sit for about 20 minutes andthen do the final shaping all rightobviously I don’t have any type ofscraper but look that removes verynicely okay so I’m just gonna delicatelychop this in half to make two loaveslittle dusting so this is just a quicklittle pre shaping one-two one-twoone-two one-two one-two flip so whilethose are bent resting it gives us achance to discuss what we’re gonna doabout proofing these things since wedon’t have the classic Van Etten thatmost sourdough Baker’s use and there’s apretty easy solution of this which isjust taking a bowl I found two bowlsthat I think will be a pretty good sizeobviously I can only make a bowl styleloaf like a round loaf I don’t have anoval bowl but maybe you can troubleshootthat at home and once you find yourbowls I’m just gonna take a tea clothI’ve got a thinner tea cloth here andjust line this thing and then what Ilike to do for these is just take wirestringand just gently coat all the sides withsome flour I can already tell not havinga bench scraper when rolling knees isslightly more difficult but itdefinitely can be done and I think whatI’m gonna do is use this far off a benchscraper so the idea of a bench scraperis you can kind of collect dough andscrape it off with like a thin metalpiece which is much more nonstick onsticky dough compared to your fingers soI might use this in the final shapingand then to add a ton of flavor and tohelp with the nonstick we’re just goingto throw a bunch of sesame seeds on this[Music]fold and then kind of just turn it up onitself turn it in and now start pullingtension pulls you’re pulling and tuckingit under itself while getting thesurface nice and tight like this littlesticky all right now we will dip it inalright so the bread is in the last stepis just going around and making sure asthis expands it doesn’t stick to thewall you had some sesame seeds and youcan also add some flour and that willjust make it more nonstick as it proofswhen I push in boom it springs rightback doesn’t leave a dent because it’snot proofso the final step before we bake this iswe’re gonna wrap these up and we’regonna put them in the fridge and proofthem overnightnow you could proof these at roomtemperature for two three hours untilthey’re ready for the ovenbut because it’s late I don’t want towait for that and also by slowing downthe proofing in the refrigerator you’regonna be developing more flavor and yourlows a better color so I’m always a bigfan of the overnight proof I also likeproofing them overnight because it’s agreat feeling going to bedknowing you’re waking up and bakingsourdough bread something about it isvery natural I feel like a real bakerwaking up early and getting those thingsin the oven[Music]when it comes to baking sourdough athome most people use a Dutch ovensomething that looks like this to mimica proper baking oven for two specificreasons one they’re super thick so theycan retain a lot of heat all of thatthermal mass gets absorbed into themetal and then when you put your breadon it it gets transferred to the breadwhich helps with the spring also byhaving a lid on the Dutch oven when thebread bakes and releases steam you’retrapping in the steam helping with theoven spring and also helping with thecolor of the bread and a proper bakingof an inject steam into the oven as youbake but unfortunately I don’t have myDutch oven I couldn’t fit in the carwhen I moved here so the best elementthat I could find in this kitchen wasthis thing right here this is a pizzasteel that I bought like two years agothat I used to make pizzas on but if youhave a cast-iron pan you could use thatas well it’s pretty much gonna be thesame exact effect that only takes careof one element because we still don’thave the steam so you’ll see how I takecare of that in just a second but whatI’m gonna do is get this in the ovenright now and preheat at 500 degrees forat least 45 minutes until you really getthat thing hot just pull this out of thefridgethey’ve been proofing overnight andlet’s see if they pass the Pope test allright see that how it springs back butstill leaves a little dent if it springsall the way back it’s under proofed andif it doesn’t spring back at all it’sover proof so I’ll show you again littlespring back but still leaves it downthis is just some parchment paper brushoff some of the excess flour inside allof a bread land I’m just going to use asharp knife score it right down themiddle and then I’ll take this pan whichis just a pen I wrapped in tin foil someice which will slowly steam in there andhelp with the ovens room[Music]all right so check that thing out prettysolid spring so there should be a lot ofsteam released out of this oven when Iopen it if things were steamy in thereturn the oven down to 450 and cook itfor another 20 minutes[Music][Music]all right so overall you know a prettygood loaf not a perfect loaf but I’vegot no baking equipment and that was afresh sourdough starter I made that aweek ago so I’m happy with these resultsand it’s kind of funny this reminds me alot of the first video I ever made onsourdough so I’ve come so long mysourdough journey but then you take awaymy supplies and I go back a little bitbut this is still delicious bread itjust might not look like the prettiestbread I’ve ever made but I’m fine withthat in quarantine with none of myequipment that’s good breadthat’s really good bread good crust goodcrumb super moist I love bread andreally love bread so there you go I hopeyou learned some good tips from thistutorial remember if you want todownload my bread baking schedules thereare five of them so click the link righthere for your free PDF downloads this isactually very helpful for me today itwas nice using this and this is just aguide it’s not exact it says right herethat there are variables when it comesto making sourdough bread it’s all aboutthe variables and being in tune withyour bread making because this isfermentation and it’s aliveso that’s gonna do it please keepsending me your bread pictures at lifeby Mike G and I’ll see you in the nextvideo else I won’t see you there youknow what I mean[Music]

19 Replies to “Can I Make Sourdough Bread with No Baking Equipment?

  1. I just made my own starter and my first loaf is fresh out of the oven. I feel like a proud father! She is beautiful!!! Thank you for helping me along the way!!!

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  5. Can I just specify something. This whole thing about yeast magically falling from the sky and your hands into the starter is just not true. The yeast is mostly present in the flour.

  6. This was the most helpfull video of the series for me. It comforts seeing somebody with the same equipment as i’ll be able to use!

  7. Does anyone know why he had to move out so suddenly? Depressing and concerning :0 im not all the way through the video so he might say but im impatient

  8. Ha, the same background music as “Every way to cook a…” with Amiel Stanek on the Bon Appetit channel. 🙂

  9. This awesome. I literally decided to begin a sourdough starter this morning— no scale, no nothin’.

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