You can bake sourdough bread

[Music]hi there I’m Sabbath sake and this is achemist cooks you know chemistry is allabout stuff combining mixing andseparating it eating and cooling itchanging its color form texture volumeconsistency viscosity look smell andfeel but mostly chemistry is aboutturning raw materials into usefulproducts which we all need cooking is alot like that only you can eat theresults if they’re any good I’ll bemaking a series of videos with recipesand techniques for some classic foodssome simple and some a little morecomplex but all fun to do I hope youenjoy them thank you so much forwatching my video today we’re going tobake a sourdough bread sounds scary butreally it’s not scary at all it’s verystraightforward just needs a little bitof patience so the basis of the wholething is thisit’s a sourdough starter this isbasically wild yeast from the air thatlives on flour and water in yourrefrigerator and lasts forever this iswhat will create our rise and this isinstead of commercial yeast gives thebread a special sour taste which is notlike none otherso what we’re going to do is we’re goingto take our sourdough jar and pour itdirectly into this plastic bowl like sojust let it all out nicely you can seehow nice and lively this starter isabout 2 cups of starter in this jarthere we areto that we add a cup of flour and anequal amounts of warm water 30 secondsin the microwave should do it just finejust pour that right in and mix it upmix it up nicely look at all the flourjust whip it out and we get sort of aliquidy consistency a little bit likepancake batter oh that smells nice ithas a very sort of a beer smell which inthe case of yeast are doing wellokay now that we’ve mixed this up I’mgonna cover it up in some plastic wrapwith a little hole punch on the top andwe’ll put this away on our countertopfor the whole night that’s about eighthours tomorrow morning we’ll come andvisit again you know sourdough bakinghas a lot of jargon and what we’re doinghere is something called proofing asponge if you can believe that basicallywhat this will do overnight is get thoseyeasts woken up from being in the fridgeand we’ll get them starting to eat thisflour that we’ve added and excluding andcreating co2 bubbles which is what wemean by tomorrow morning that activitywill be strong enough for us to startmaking ourso see you in the morning so here we arethe next morning our wild yeast havebeen feasting on the starches in theflour making lovely co2 bubbles so oursponges proofed Kenwood mixer this mixeris 40 years old still works like newamazing yeah you cannot so we need twocups identical cups one we’ll use forthe starter the other one we’ll use forflour so we’ll start by pouring 2 cupsof the proof sponge or bowlthere’s one and there’s twoand another quarter cup goes not verynice but you get the idea very goodperfectthe speed is about rightwe do something amazing we’re going tolet it oughta lies in other words we’regonna let it sit for half an hour andlet that yeast start working againand our mixture looks something likethis the whole idea here is to let theyeast feast give it a chance start upagainNo1 tablespoon of coarse saltfor a whileand another cup with spunk flour we’renow ready to add our third cup of flourand this cup is actually two-thirdswhite flour and about 1/3 of whole-grainspelt flour it’s good for flavorslowly add that in[Laughter]it looks likewar of our sponge tbspokay so we’re running another 10 minutesor so that’s almost 15 minutes in totalwhen we’re ready take our dough out alittle bit of hand kneading this is whatit looks like and what we’re going to dois flour our hands a little bit and takeour dough off the hook so it’s nice andstretchy already as you can see that’sthe key to sourdough bread is nicestretchy dough well they read it sothank you to our trusty 40-year old Kenwood and now we’ll do some and eatingvery flexible non sticky at all you cando the work for you really to get thedough into the right consistency beforereach this stage this should do the jobthough shouldn’t be very sticky look atmy handsPhillie aerobic alright okay move to ourlittle window test and see how are wedoing here not too badly getting awindow nice and thingood getting there getting there alittle bit more also do itpush and fold push fold push fold thereare a lot of methods in sourdough bakingdifferent ways to prove a sponge toalkalize different temperaturesdifferent conditions and times but atthe end of the day you need to end upwith a nice flexible dough ball thatreally only contains flour water andsaltsome people add a little bit of vinegarbit of olive oil a little bit of sugarto their dough mixture and that worksthat can develop different flavors somemore intense flavors but really thebasic sourdough bread is just threeingredients a little bit of muscle okayso nowwe feel that we’ve done a good job ofmeeting this dough and what we’ll do nowwe’ll take a floured plastic containerin which we’ll do our rising and we willdrop our dough ball right there in themiddle don’t get down a little bit likethat looks nicewe’ll cover it up come visit it again inhalf an hourimportant parts of sourdough baking isof course maintaining your starterso here over from our mix that’ll be thebasis of our continued immortal starteradd one cup of warm water give it a goodmix so here we are here’s our starterready to go back in the fridge I’ve hadthis particular starter for severalyears you put it in the fridge feed itonce a week and it’ll last forever abouthalf an hour and we’re ready for ourfirst fold different theories about howimportant the stages but seems to workfor me stretch out your flour fold itover about 1/3 wet your hands a littlebit won’t be any problem to do this samething on the other side turn it 90degrees your hands againlet gravity do the work stretch fold 1/3over stretch there you gofold one throw it over add it down stillplenty of flour in here so I don’t haveto add any more it’s not sticking andwill come visit it again in one hournice so it’s been an hourready for our next stretch in the foldwith our hands a little bit and off wegosame story stretch under its own weightlike so fold it over stretch fold over[Music]stretch you can see that the dough is alittle bit more now you need to getreally soft we’ll come back and visit itin one more hour one thing you can do ifit’s a really cold day set your oven toabout 25 or 30 degrees and just put yourplastic container with your sourdoughright in your oven nothing will happento it and this is instead of what thebig boys call a proofing cabinet and itwill do the same job ready for our nextfold very stretchy stretch it outbe very neat stretch it out a little bitmore okay so we’ll do this one more timefor a total of three not ours come backin another hour and then we’ll be ableto shape our dough one more hourlook at that isn’t that nice so nowwe’re ready to shape our loaf our doughis risen very nicely and we need toknock it down and shape our loaf Irecommend that you get one of these it’scalled a banner tone or a proofingbasket doesn’t cost very much and it’llsave you a lot of work and we’ll put ourdough in here and let it rise and it’llhave this very nice shape when it’s doneso what we’re gonna do now is we’regoing to put some flour on thisliberally so the dough doesn’t stickshape our loaf and plug it in so we’regoing to liberally dust the Benettonwith some semolina like so and someflour like so get it them all sides soit’s ready for usthat’s great okay and now we ready toshape our loaf so put a little bit offlour our hands get our nice fluffydough onto our surface you don’t needmuch flour on the surface and well notall the air out of this oh the air outso that’s goodvery nice elastic dough very littlesticky you don’t need much flour put onjust a little bit just to make a littlebit easier it’s all you need and off yougoall right so now you want to shape ourloaf and the way we do that is weflatten this thing out like so it’sroughly rectangular shape it’s goodstretch it out a little bit more perfectokay good know what we’re gonna doyou’re gonna fold these over a couple ofears fold this over here flip it arounddo the same on the other side fold foldand roll and now we’re gonna roll thiswhole thing like so and we’re going totry and get some tension on the surfaceof this thing which is what we’re doingherethat’s good build up some tension makesure this seam is nice and closed allright that looks good and thisgoes into our Benetton with a seam sideup like so close the seam that’s lookinggood flour on top of our loaf and Ifloured the bottom part of this plasticwrap so it doesn’t stick to the doughand ready to wait for about three hourssourdough bacon takes a long time it’sall about patience so we’ll be back sohere is our loaf it’s risen after aboutthree hours take the cover off and whatwe’re going to do is two things firstwe’re going to take a pound cake pan buthalf filled with water and that will goat the bottom of our oven we’re going topreheat our oven to 230 degreescentigrade which is about 450 Fahrenheitnext what we’re going to do is we’regoing to put some flour and somesemolina down on our baking sheet andthen turn the bread onto itjust a little bit of flour this is justto make sure that bread doesn’t stick tothe pansome people will bake their breads in aDutch oven which is preheated or heat uptheir ovens to 500 and 600 degreescentigrade and throw in boiling waterdon’t do any of that stuff all we do iswe bake on a regular cookie sheet and weput a pan of water in the oven whichwe’ll show in a minute so what we’regoing to do we’re going to take our Dinotime and we’re going to flip the breadonto our baking sheet there it is withour tin filled with water at the bottomthe oven is preheating to 230 degreescentigrade after we score it okay so nowwe’re ready to score our loaf whichwe’ll do with a scalpel one quick whyanother one nice and deep don’t beafraid good deep cut and I like to put alittle bit more coarse salt on top likeso and it goes sour bread is in the ovenand we have set our oven for 35 minutesin about 10 minutes we’ll lower thetemperature to 180 degrees C okay soit’s been about 10 minutes let’s have aquick look see what we’re looking likeoh yeah very nice oven spring there yousee that that looks great there you haveit sabado the king of loaves looks verynicea nice rise we’ll let it cool off ofcourse no cutting in about oh I don’tknow as long as I can stand and checkthe crumb so all in all that’s 15 and ahalf hours seven and a half of themtoday it takes a long time to make goodsourdough okayso now it’s time to come we have sohere’s our loaf nice open crumb nicecrusty top wonderful well baked see thesprings right back to the test you justpress it in so there you have itpretty amazing hey all you need is alittle bit of sourdough which isbasically wild yeast some flour somewater a little salt and there’s themiracle a loaf of sourdough bread theking of loaveshope you enjoyed it