This recipe for sourdough bread produces an impressively large loaf with a deep-gold, thick, and crunchy crust that’s as good as it gets. The crumb is soft and spongy. It has a wheaty flavor, but a white-bread texture.

This is a multi-day process with lots of twists and turns. Be sure to read the directions completely before take-off.

MAKE THE STARTER

I’m assuming that you don’t have a starter, and need to make one. If you do have one (once you follow this recipe, you will have one), you can skip this and go directly to making the bread.

What you need for about 3 cups of starter:

5.5 oz. (1 cup) bread flour
5 oz. (1 cup) whole-wheat pastry flour
8 oz. (1 cup) warm water
1 packet (2 Tbs) active dry yeast
1 Tbs sugar

How to make the starter:

1. In a large, sealable container, stir the flour, water, and yeast well past the point that they’re mixed, about 100 strokes with a wooden spoon.

“Warm” water is about 110°F.

My container is about eight inches tall, with a six-inch diameter; you could get by with two inches less in height.

2. Cover the container with plastic wrap, and let it sit on the countertop for two days.

At first, you’ll get a formidable rise out of the yeast. That’s why you need such a large container. Over the course of the first day, it’ll fall back. If on the second day you notice that the mixture is looking non-homogenous, and a layer of liquid is developing, stir in a heaping quarter-cup of flour.

The starter should have active bubbles. It should smell fruity, or like wheat beer … smells that a baker would recognize as good bread dough smells.

If you’ve ever made a poolish before, you know the texture that you’re after. The starter should be a thick, sticky batter. Much thicker than a typical pancake batter, but nowhere near as thick as a biscuit dough. Add flour or water as needed to achieve this texture.

MAKE THE BREAD

What you need for 1 large (nearly 3 lbs.) loaf:

19 oz. (~2⅓ cups) filtered, room-temperature water
7 oz. (~1 cup) starter, room temperature
1 lb. (~3 cups) bread flour
8.5 oz. (~1¾ cups) whole-wheat pastry flour
1 Tbs coarse salt
Corn meal

How to make the bread:

1. Pour the water into a large mixing bowl. Whisk in the starter. Fold in the flours with a large silicone spatula until there are no longer any patches of dry flour. Cover and let rest for 1 hour. (Meanwhile, feed and store the starter – see below.)

If the water’s coming straight from the fridge, nuke it for a minute so that it’s closer to room temperature.

You can swap the bread and wheat flours for AP flour. However, mixing whole wheat pastry flour with bread flour will leave you with a type of strong, AP-ish flour that gives the bread a bit of rustic color and flavor, while still leaving the loaf in “white bread” territory.

2. Sprinkle the salt over the dough.
3. Place a large bowl in the sink and fill it water. Dunk your hands in the bowl of water, shake off the excess, and then use your hands to grab the dough from the edge of the bowl, pull it up, and fold it over the top of the dough. Do this many times, in different directions, constantly folding the dough in on itself in an effort to distribute the salt.  Cover and let rest 30 minutes.
4. Dunk your hands in the water bowl and shake of the excess. Then, grab the dough by one edge, lift and stretch that edge, pull it over the top of the dough and fold it in on itself. Give the bowl a quarter turn and repeat. Do this until you’ve made it back to your starting points (a total or four folds). With each fold, the dough will be harder to stretch. As this happens, go ahead and lift the dough right out of the bowl, let gravity stretch it for you, and then fold it. Cover the dough, and let it rest for 30 minutes.
5. Repeat Step 4, five more times.
6. Cover the dough, and place it in the refrigerator overnight (12 – 24 hours).

---

7. Turn the dough out onto a sparsely-floured or un-floured surface, and, using a bench scraper and/or your hands, and shape it into a tight ball. Dust it liberally with flour, cover it with a clean tea towel, and let it rest for 30 minutes. In the meantime, rip off a piece of parchment large enough to line a casserole pot (or Dutch oven). Push it into the pot and press along the sides of it to get it to conform to the pot as best you can. Then, remove it from the pot, coat it lightly with butter, and dust it liberally with corn meal. Return it to the pot and press it once again as neatly as you can along the sides. Give it one more dusting of corn meal, for good measure.  
8. Gently move the dough into the lined pot, cover it, and place it in the refrigerator for 3 hours. About 45 minutes before the three hours are up, place a second casserole pot, covered, into the oven, and preheat to 500°F.

Yeah, so what am I doing with two casserole pots? One of them was an investment: Le Creuset. I’ve had it for decades, and it will be passed on to my descendants for a millennia.  The second one I bought for maybe $10 at an estate sale. I wasn’t sure about it, but figured it was worth $10 to find out. It’s “Club” cookware … very thick aluminum. It’s lighter than it looks like it should be, nonetheless it works surprisingly well. I use it when I have to feed a crowd, and I need to double something that usually takes up my primary casserole pot. If you don’t have two casserole pots, search out Dutch oven bread recipes to see other ways of going about this.

8. Score the loaf.
9. This part needs to go fairly quickly: grab the hot pot out of the oven, remove the lid, grasp the parchment and transfer both it and the loaf into the hot pot. Slip a couple ice cubes in between the parchment and the pot (not in contact with the loaf, obviously), place the hot lid back on the pot, and place th pot back in the oven. Bake if for ½-hour. Remove the lid, reduce the oven temperature to 450°F, and continue to bake until the interior of the loaf reaches 200°F, another ½-hour.
10. Remove the bread from the parchment and let it rest for 2 hours on a rack.

Store the bread in a breadbox, or loosely wrapped in wax paper, or in a paper bag that is not tightly sealed. Once it’s cut, you can leave it on the bread board, cut side down, and slip a paper bag over the loaf. Or, lay a piece of plastic wrap over the cut side, and then form aluminum foil over that to hold the plastic against the bread. Don’t attempt to seal up the whole loaf; simply protect the cut side from direct exposure to air. This will produce a compromise between keeping the loaf fresh, and keeping the crust crunchy.

This bread makes unbelievable toast, and over-the-top sandwiches.

FEED AND STORE THE STARTER

What you need:

4 oz. flour
4 oz. water, room temperature

How to do it:

1. Thoroughly stir the starter.
2. Remove and discard or use 7 oz. of it.
3. Stir the flour and water into the starter. Give it 100 strokes with a wooden spoon. Cover the container loosely and leave on the countertop overnight, then cover tightly and refrigerate.

Feed once a week. Starters are surprisingly resilient. There are lots of options for bulking it up, paring it down, and long-term storage. See this article at King Arthur Flour and this one at The Kitchn.

The portion of the starter that you remove, if you intend to use it, feed it also: add 4 oz. flour and 4 oz. water. (Subtract this flour and water from the recipe.) Stir 100 strokes. Cover and leave out overnight.

THE BACKSTORY

This is my first foray into baking a sourdough loaf. The method I used is easy, but it takes a full two days, and on the first day, you need to do a significant amount of babysitting. Perfect during quarantine, I guess. I was extraordinarily pleased with the crust: among the best I’ve ever produced. I wish I’d’ve been able to get larger bubbles; I think I might’ve formed too tight a ball in the proofing stage. It could be though, that I should’ve skipped Step 5; this step develops flavor, but I’ve noticed that it tends to produce a finer crumb.

This bread is very lightly sourdough flavored. I think that’s due to the youth of my starter. I believe that starter flavor develops over time.

Light Weat Sourdough Bread

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man!, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you, Kesor. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Much thanks to Martha Stewart, The Pioneer Woman and The Bread Guide, which I found invaluable in preparing this post.

Keep up with us on Bloglovin’