How to bake Homemade Sourdough Bread – a step by step guide

morninguh i’m jamie so what i’m going to do istake you through processof how to bake asaudo loaf very few ingredients neededjust flourwater and salt so that’s it reallyfrom the flour water and salts you’regoing to get a salgo starter and thenthe sourdough started i’m going to useto makesour dough loaf but it will all becomeclearon the video hope you enjoy hope itmakes senseand uh if you do make one send me apicturelet me see what it looks like at the endokay good luckokay so for the purposes of this videowhere i’m going to show youhow to bake a sourdough loaf of breadi’m going to assume that you’ve alreadygot your sourdough starter in place thisismy sourdough starter it’s a couple ofthat’s about a month oldi suppose um i’m not really going toshow you right now how tocreate this i’m going to assume thatyou’ve already got yourself a starterif you haven’t very easy to find justlook it up on the internetum how to create zelda starter inessence it’suh 50 flour 50water mixed together and leave it andthen every single dayyou pour a bit of it away and youreintroduce50 flour 50 water about 50 grams eachmix it leave it next day pour it awayleave a little bit left again add alittle bit offlour water mix and do that for six daysor so and what will happen is you’llstart to see thatit starts to ferment so it’ll getbubbles in it’ll start to rise up theside of the glassafter about six seven days it’ll befully active andit’ll be ready to use so i use thiselastic band on the outside of my jarso i place it there once i’ve added theflour and waterso i know when it’s actually writtenwhen it’s active so that’ssoda starter okay so at this stageyou’ve alreadyfed to your starter dough you can seehere that it’s already started to risethis is where it startedso this is a fed starter dome this iswhat you should start withfor my sourdough i use a combination ofwholemeal flour spelt flour and whiteflour so with whitei have 200 grams and then 100 grams ofeach of the other types but reallyif you want to use 400 of of whitethat’s fine sojust use whatever you’ve got umobviously it just gives a differentflavor combinationuh in terms of the end result but yeah400 gramsso when you’re adding the salt umthere’s a few different ways that youcan do it first of all you can add itstraightinto the flour mixture which is what i’mgoing to do in a secondmake sure it’s well mixed oralternatively you can dissolve it in thewaterum if you do that then you’ve got abetter chance of it distributing amongstthe doughbut i’ve tried all different ways andactually it kind of worksyou will hear a lot of people say don’tput the salt on top of theuh the yeast because it’ll kill theyeast but really when you’re mixing itlike thisit’s it’s not going to have that thateffect so i’m just going to add10 grams of salt into this doughso 10 gramsokay good for flavor so don’t miss outthe saltso a little bit of a schoolboy errorearlier because i thought i wasrecording and i wasn’tnot that i’m blaming apple products atall that’s uh user error i think youcall itso um what i did is i measured out 230milliliters of water so just lukewarmwaterand then the starter dough which you sawearlier i actually pouredinto the water and mixed it upand that obviously meant then that wheni added it to the dough it hadan opportunity to really get mixed upquite well so that was the wateruh it was the uh the sourdough starterso it was 230 milliliters as i said ofthe water and in terms of the starterit’s 160 grams that you need to usefor this recipe um what elseuh the salt it was 10 grams so i thenjust tookthe water and the sourdough mixturepoured it into the dry ingredients gaveit a quick mix until it was justincorporated and then left itso what we’re doing here is we’re justallowing the doughto what we call autolyze so it’sbasically in layman’s termsjust absorbing the waterand the the sourdough starter it’sallowing the cellstructure of the gluten to break down soit’s break down all the protein strandswithin thedough it’s allowing the the gluten todevelopand it’s basically doing what wouldnormally happen through the kneadingprocessbut hey we don’t need to need it if wedon’tneed to so we let it uh stand for awhilelet that process um continue and i wouldsayleave it for about half an hour toutilize and then you do what we call thelift and turn or lift and fold processwe’ll do that a few timesand i’ll show you what that looks likenextokay so now is the time to do the firstlift and turn so this is where you’regonna continue to develop the glutenhere soyou see here so basically you want totake the corner liftfold turn around againsaying lift foldagain lift foldlift fold sowe’ve done that four times in that turnuhwe’ll leave that again for about anotherhalf an hour and then we’ll come backand we’ll do the same againokay so it’s now had another 30 minutesandsee the dial still there nicely anduh second lift and turn so againscoop up right underneath liftand fold lifti don’t know if you can see where it’sactually a lot stretchy than it wasbeforeunfold that’s the gluten starting todevelopwithin that dough so lift and foldand once you start doing this you’ll beable to tell yourselves the actual feelof the doughit’s softer it’s more silkyso that’s telling you that it’s workingso there you go that’s another fourso leave it for another half an hour andwe’ll come back it’s now rested foranother 30 minutesagain i’m gonna start toliftso stretch it as you’re doing it unfoldquarter turn of the bowllift and stretch as you’re doing itfoldagain stretchfold i don’t know you can see but thetexture of the dough is changingit’s kind of springing back a little bitmore so you can see that thethe gluten is actually starts to developin there start to come nice and springyso again final turn lift and foldokay so that’s that so we’re going to doone more of thoseafter this and then we’re going to shapeit and we’re going to leave it to restuh to start to develop that flavorthat’s going to beall important when we cook itso it’s now had four tansas you can see the dough is a lotstretchier and if you pull it up whatyou’ll start to see nowis it’s very thin you can see the lightbehind this this is the window paneeffectso you’ll start to see that as you pullitand stretch it the glute has developedand yeah it’s actually really stickysmooth and when you do the window peneffect try and do it from themiddlelet’s see the stretchiness thereso you can see but i can see the lightcoming in through behindthis so that tells me that the glutenhas developedto the point i wanted to so the dosereally told methat it’s ready so all i’m going to donow is i’m going to shapeit and i’m going to leave it to restso the thing is when you are workingwithsorry all that dough and making breadyou’re really going to have to get usedto it being a messy okay so if you don’tlike having flour and dough everywherethen probably isn’t for youuh but there you go so this if you’dactually gone through the process ofum kneading the doughyou know developing those musclesworking it for 1020 minutes whatever then this is thestate that you’d get atbut actually as you saw we’ve just doneaturn process we’ve just lifted stretchedturned we’ve left it it’s taking alonger timebut we’ve got the same result so now alli want to dois i’m going to put it back in the bowlbut before i do that i’m going toshape it slightly so i’m just going tomake sure that the doughis and ifwork oh yeah soyou’re gonna fold it turn itfold it turn it okayokayand we’re going to do a proper shapinglater before we actually cook it for itsfinal stage butthere we go just like a little ball likethatplunk it back in the bowland then leave that really to kind ofdouble in sizegrow develop the flavors will start todevelop in thereand uh yeah we’ll come back to it whenthat’s happenednow you notice i’ve been using this touh cover the doughafter every turn so those of you thattravel quite a lotum well used to travel quite a lot iguess uh you’ll notice theseare handy child capsnow i don’t really have a need for ashower capto cover my non-existent hair sowhenever i go toa hotel uh i pick these upuh cause it’s good for covering stufflike this so if you’ve got somethat’s what you can use otherwise justuse a wet tea towel or a damp tea towelokay so this next bit is really just alittle bit of preparationum so what you will need well i actuallyusea pyrex dish so a pyrex dish witha lid like thisand this is this really is what i’mgoing to be provinguh the dough in for the next stage buti’m also going to be using it tocook in it’s going to act as a childrenuh so this is what you need or somethingsimilarif you’ve got a big casserole part orsomething like that then you can usethat as wellso yeah so that’s the first one you’realso going to needa tea towel so not one of those terrytoweling fluffy tea towelsbut something which is flufffree uh and easy to clean uh this isgonna getvery uh dusty with flour uh it’s alsogonna be something that’s gonnaum contain the dough when it’s risingin the next rise so what you’re going toneed to do hereis i use a sieve and some white flouryou don’t need to use a sievei just think it’s easier to get thething coveredso i will basically get a good coveringofflour because otherwise what’s going tohappen is the wet dough will stickto the tea towel and i’ve hadone or two interesting episodes wherei’ve had topick dough off whichbelieve me isn’t fun so you’re gonnado this and then you’re gonna basicallyplace thiswith the flower facing upwards insidethe dutch oven which we looked atearlierokay so here we are so it’s insidethe casserole dishuh just make sure really that all thecreases andsoap such have gotflour in it if you if you’re worriedabout having too much flour on theloaf at the end don’t worry because youcan actually dust it off at the nextstage or once it’s risen sodon’t worry too much about that but youjust really want to make sure that thedough is not going tostick to this when you put it in it okayso back to our dough let’s have a lookso this is therisen dough and as you can see it’skind of quite nicely more than doubledin sizevery soft okay lovelyshiny soft looking dough what i’m goingto need to do now istip this out onto a floured surface so ican start to shape itready to go into the dutch ovennow this is probably one of the mostimportant partsthat you’re gonna really needto focus on so first of all let me justshow you can you see the bubbles and thein there so as i pull that away you cansee the strands thereso that tells me that it’s fully risenit’s well risenthat the the gluten has developedwell it’s nice sticky dough so it’sgonna beit’s quite a um it’s quite a moistdough and actually it can be quitedifficult to work with but thisis gonna be where the folding and theshapingis going to be important so get all yourdough out you don’t want to waste any ofitokay so there we go there’s the doughhandy scraper couple of quid you canpick one of these upreally helps you shape and get the doughoffagain as i said before you’re gonna haveflour everywhere but you knowjust gonna have to live with it so a bitmore flourflour on my hands so i’m gonna flattenit out a little bitnow watch the way that i shape this sobasically i’m going to fold overfold over the dough okay thenokay so the dough is foldedinto the middle fold it into the middlefold it over and thenon the opposite side fold it into themiddle fold it into the middlefold it over so it meets in the centerand thenfold that over and crimp the edgesso you crimp the edges so you’re reallycreating a tight seal herenow if you don’t do this what’s going tohappenis your loaf isn’t going to riseproperlyin the oven and it’s probably going tosplit so you want a really goodtight seal on this and then the next bitreally is you’re going topull it towards yourself pull itpull it and what you’re doing here iscreating tensionacross the top of the dough and creatinga ballso just do this a few times you createthat tensionturn it create the tension turn ittension turn tension turnokay so you know that lovely shapeso we’ll get ourfrom back what i’m going to do is placethatso the top faces down okay solike this like thisand then roll over so the topfaces down okayso again what we’re going to do now isuse a little bit more flourand make sure that the sides are coveredbecause again as this rises up to theinside of theinside of the towel what you don’t wantis for it to stickokay because that’s going to make itabsolutely impossible to get outagain as i said this has happened to mea few times solearn by my mistakes so you gonicely coveredand then all we’re doing now is foldingthis overgiving it a nice little home to live infor probablyi would say you know that the next threethree and a half hours or so at roomtemperaturewhat you can actually do is leave thatin the fridge overnight to slowlyrise and that’s it readyright so it’s now been probably aboutthree and a half hourssince we put this bad boy in thechildren or the casserole dishso let’s see how things are progressingokay so as you can seeyeah absolutely risengreat so that’s kind of what we’relooking forso we want to do now istip this out so what we do is we putthislid on we turn it upside downwe remove thetea towel from the top and then we’reready to scoreuh the towel and i said before you knowif there’s too muchflour you can give it a bit of a brushofftold you if you’re worried about flourbeing on your work surfacenot for youthere you go unless if you wanted thoseyou know those rounduh concentric circles that you’ve seenon a lot of sourdoughwhat you need is a banaton but mineis back in manchester and i’m in genevasoi don’t have one of those right now soi’m just going to brush that offand now we’re ready to score so what youwant to get isa nice sharp bread knifeum if you’re doing it traditionallyyou have something called a lame andthat is basically a piece of wood witha razor blade in it but that’s whatbakers use we don’t home bakers we’regoing to use a bread knifeum so be confident when you’re doing thescoring becausewhen you make the the lines the scoresin the bread what that’s going to do isit allow it to have what we call ovenspringin the oven when it goes into the ovenand allows it to expandif you don’t score it properly you’renot going to have thatreally nice risen loaf because it’sgoing to be really constrained andmaintained withinthe the bread itself so let’s have alook so let’s goone twothree fourokay so that you go so once we’ve donethiswe put the lid back onlike so and now it’s ready to go intothe ovenat at 230 degrees centigradeand it’s going to stay in there with thelid on for 25minutes uh and once it’s had 25 minutesat that temperaturewe take the lid off and we cook it foranother 25 minutesso let’s give it some time to cookbakenow it’s time to take her out of theoven and here’s the finished loafbut all the drains are different so ionly driveyou okay you get lostget someand here we go the final loaf so i’vegiven it time tocool down actually it is still a littlewarmbut let’s cut into it and see what we’vegot so uhlet’s see i’m just going to cut inlet’s seenice warm loaf and here you goso you’ve got lovelyaerated lots of little holesthere you go so that is going to belovely toasted for sandwichesand believe me during lockdown we’vebeen having probably the same sandwichesfor the lastwhat seems like 345 weeks umbut there you go so that’s how you makea homemade sourdough loaf now iam not professional baker i’m a homebakerthat is my way of making sourdough loafinless than 24 hours if you want to takelonger you canyou can store it in the fridge you cancook it days after but quite franklyif you want a piece of bread on a pieceof toastwith your coffee in the morning that isthe way to do itenjoy