- Imagine you could make an amazing sourdough bread like
this while you are sleeping. Now, being very lazy myself,
I wanted to develop a method where I set up the dough in the evening, and then in the morning it's ready. I thought I had developed something, but then I tried and it was a big fail. After a few more attempts, I
finally found a way that works. Ta-Da (upbeat music) Let's give this a shot
and see how it tastes. Mmm, wow, the flavor of this bread. This is so good. I wish I could mail you a slice. Oh, this is so fluffy. This is especially handy if you have a job or you're just a lazy person like me and don't wanna spend so much time on your sourdough bread. Let me show you exactly how. Now, I wouldn't be a good engineer if I didn't show you a nice flow chart for the whole process. So the way how this recipe works is we just mix the ingredients. Then we knead, which is also called as creating dough strength. We extract a small fermentation sample and wait until that reached
a desired size increase. Then we shape the dough. We proof it at room
temperature or in the fridge, that depends on what you like. And then we bake it. Super simple recipe. There are two types of bread recipes. There's the no knead bread recipe. And then what I would call the
traditional sourdough recipe. No knead has very little
work, low in hydration, a relatively dry crumb,
people resort to Autolysis. You do no stretch and faults. Overall, it's an okay-ish bread. The traditional method, you
create a lot of dough strength. You can go higher in hydration. You have a nice moist crumb, which is great for consistency. You do an Autolysis. And you do a lot of stretch and folds, sometimes even one every hour. And then comes the bread code method. By the way, that's me. Bread code because I'm an
engineer and like to bake bread. Anyways, it's definitely way less work in comparison to the traditional method. You can also go high in hydration. You have a nice moist crumb. We don't do an autolysis, which means you even have less work. And instead of doing
many stretch and folds, we're just going to be doing
one single stretch and fold. But more on this topic a little bit later. So we get all the benefits
from the traditional recipe but are much closer in terms of effort to the no knead bread recipe. So let's do this. Let me show you exactly how, and you will be surprised
how simple it actually is. I already added 350 grams of bread flour and 50 grams of whole wheat flour. Now I'm adding around 300 grams
of room temperature water. In terms of baker's math, that's 75%. Since we do this bread overnight, we're not going to do an autolysis, which is just mixing flour and
water and letting that sit. We will put together all the
ingredients at the same time. That's what I really
love about this recipe. It makes it so simple. Put everything together, let
it sit, shape it, bake it. Pretty much done. I'm adding eight grams of salt, which is around 2% in
terms of baker's math. I'm going to be using
my ripe liquid starter. Look at those nice bubbles here. This is so active. Now, if you don't have
a sourdough starter yet, there's nothing to worry. Please do check out this full tutorial on how to make your sourdough starter. The flavor you get is just amazing. It changes from vinegary acidic
to very mild and yogurty. I love the starter. The final flavor you get in your bread is just out of this world. This hasn't been fed for a day. If you're struggling with fermentation, I would definitely recommend you to do a couple of 1:5:5 feedings, which is one part of sourdough starter, five parts of flour and
five parts of water. These days I like to
make my sourdough starter a little bit more liquid. I just think it makes
things so much easier. What's not so nice about this starter is that this is actually going
to increase the hydration of our dough quite a lot. So that's where a stiffer
starter comes in more handy. What I want you to
learn from this video is that since we're doing an overnight bread, this bread has around... Not this bread, this though
has around 12 hours to ferment until tomorrow morning. Don't use too much, just use a very tiny amount
of the sourdough starter. It's going to regrow inside of the dough. And that's why I can also
be using my old starter, which I haven't fed in quite a while. So if it's warm where you live, you want to be using around
5% based on the flour. That will be 20 grams
of sourdough starter. If it's cold where you live, then you can go for as high
as 10% sourdough starter. Based on the flour, that will be 40 grams. In this case, I opted for the 5%. It's cold here but this sourdough starter is also relatively old. So you can play around with this value to make the whole process work with your own personal schedule. And that's pretty much
what I wanted to show you with this video, but we're of course now going to continue making
this amazing bread. Since I'm feeling lazy, I'm just going to be using my stand mixer. You definitely don't have
to get a stand mixer. It's not required. You can also knead
everything with your hands. In fact, that's what I recommend you to do in case you just started
with the sourdough baking. You will develop a much
better feeling for the dough. I got five amazing tips on how to create super dough strength. Please do check that out and
please follow that tutorial. I am just going to be
using the stand mixer until I see that the dough
let's go off the bowl. Then I know that I
created enough strength. Creating strength is super
important for this recipe because we're not going to be doing any stretch and folds during the night. Well, maybe you want to,
but then you would have to get up in the middle of the night. So I'd rather not, I'd rather sleep. And that's why we need to create a lot of dough strength at the start. Let's knead this. And then I'm going to show you one simple cool hack on top of that. And voila, this is our
dough done kneading. Check this out. This is the sort of
window pane that you want. At some point, of course,
it's going to tear, but please note this consistency. This is what you want. If you're not at this consistency, try adding a little bit more flour or just knead a little bit longer. It's very important that you
have this kind of consistency. I'm going to take the dough now, and I'll place it on my unfloured surface. I'm now extracting a
small piece of the dough. And this dough is going to
tell us exactly when our dough is done with the bulk
foundation, which starts now. That's why I also gave you the baker's math percentages before. You could be doing exactly this recipe as well for multiple
doughs at the same time. I'm placing that in a small jar which I will keep close to the dough. A good value to start with
is a 25% size increase that you should aim for of the sample. My flour can go up to a hundred percent, but this time I want to aim
for something around 50%. Here's a small chart
that I prepared for you based on how much protein you
have inside of your flour, how much of a dough size
increase you should look for. The more gluten you have, the more your dough can be inflated. Over time, the gluten is
converted by the Protease enzyme and to Lactic Acid bacteria
eating your gluten. So with more gluten, there's
more that can be converted, and thus the fermentation can be longer. Which also means that you will have a more sour bread in the end, by the way. Okay, I'm getting sidetracked. This is just a rough table. Please use that for your own reference, but I would recommend you to start with around a 25% size increase. It's time to round up our dough now. You can do that using a dough scraper, or you can also do it
with your plain hands. At a 45 degree angle, I'm
pushing into the dough. Then I'm pulling it over the surface. And this only works because
we did not use any flour. And check this out. This is the consistency of the dough. It nicely holds its shape. It's not flattening out despite having probably
around 80% hydration. I'm now moving the dough
to a clean container. The dough has been
placed in this container, and this is our sample. I just marked it. It's around 10:00 PM and this is the goal. Keep them close. That's why it was important that we use room temperature water. That way this sample doesn't cool down or heat up faster than our main dough. Keep them close. No stretch and folds, nothing. We're gonna be back in the morning. Bye bye, auf Wiedersehen. Let me pause here for a second. And then without any stretch and folds, I would just proceed and shape my dough. After proofing, I would bake it. The crumb was perfectly fermented. However, I didn't get that
beautiful oven spring. I didn't get that ear. And that ear just adds
so much amazing taste to the whole brand. So I was missing out on something. But then I hit the interwebs,
researched a little bit. And there's this one
topic that I want to have a closer look at, because
this is super important for this overnight sourdough bread. By understanding and mastering it, my breads just became so much better. So there is a very important
lesson to be learned here. And I want to show you. we need to talk about dough strength. Dough strength is the
reason why in this case we did get that oven spring and why we didn't have that beautiful ear. Let me explain. So what happens is, we knead our dough and thus we are increasing
the dough strength. Then over time the gluten
network just relaxes almost like when you're
making a pizza pie. At the start it still holds together. If you just wait 15 minutes, you can make an amazing pizza pie. The same thing happens with the sourdough. And then when we are shaping it again and we're getting some
of dough strength again. The dough continues to relax. We want to bake it at some point. If we miss that point, we will
not get that beautiful ear and we will not have that oven spring. That's actually the reason why after 36 hours in the fridge or so you won't have that oven spring again. I never noticed my doughs
were over fermented. It would just be that the
dough had relaxed too much. And this is something we have to fix. Now, there are several
options at our disposal. What we could do is we
could make a stiffer dough. That's how no knead bread recipes work. You have a stiffer dough. And that dough won't lose
dough strength as fast. But if I do that, then my
crumb is not going to be so nice and wet. And that's what I like. I like this play of
different consistencies. What we could do is for instance, we could give our dough a tighter shape and thus increase the dough strength. But me personally, I would need to learn a
new shaping technique. And I don't bake 500 breads a day. So that sounds quite
cumbersome to me as well. What I could do though is, I could of course try to
do stretch and folds here during the night and wake up to create additional dough strength. But waking up in the night
doesn't sound so nice. So what I'm going to do instead is in the morning when I wake up, before my dough is finished
with the bulk fermentation, which is this fermentation here. I'm just going to be giving
my dough one stretch and fold. So this one stretch and fold will create a lot of dough strength. And then around one hour later, I'm going to be doing the shaping. The idea is that I'll keep
carrying on this dough strength all the way to the final
stages of the process. And that's exactly what I want. And just to spoiler a little bit, this turned out to be amazing. The dough really nicely
opened up in the oven. Now I only tested another five
breads being a hobby baker. And of course this is not scientific. I would probably need to test 100 breads, but I think this show is a nice tendency. So let's go back, let's
get our hands dirty again. And let me show you how
amazing this bread turned out. So one more time, the original flow chart. And now the only thing
that I'm going to change is I'm going to be doing
another stretch and fold around one hour before I
start with the shaping. This way you get more dough strength. And this means that your dough is going to rise much more in the oven. And voila, our here's our dough. Let's try this one more time. The sample has almost doubled in size. I would say it still
needs a little bit more, but I want to give it
this stretch and fold now to make sure that the
dough has enough strength. Just wetting my hands a little bit. Then I'm going around the dough. I want to make sure that I give it a nice tight stretch and fold,
as this gives the dough additional dough strength,
exactly what I want. (upbeat music continues) Look at this, how nice
and puffy the dough is. The dough holds nicely together. Exactly what I want. I'll just let this sit
for another 30 minutes now before I proceed with the final shape. The wetting makes sure just
that the gluten relaxes a little bit and that we
have a bigger surface area. And that in the end creates
more dough strength as well because I can glue the
dough together better. See you. So overall it has been around 12 hours. Our dough sample here has
nicely increased in size. The dough looks amazing. I just have to be careful. If I ferment for longer now, I might run into issues
of over fermentation. And then the dough would
start to break down. It would become super sticky. The only thing you can do
then is take your dough, toss it into a loaf pan, wait
a little bit and then bake it. The loaf pan in general,
I think is a great option that's totally underrated. It just makes amazing breads. And it's so much easier. All you would now do is take this, put that in a loaf pan and done. Anyways, we are now going
to shape this dough. And for that, I'm just covering it with a little bit of flour. The nice thing about this container is that I can just flip it over and the dough is gonna come right out. Now I'm just elongating the
dough just a little bit, which gives me a bigger surface area on which I can glue the dough together. Now I take the bottom part and gently fold it into the middle. I'm also tapping it
down just a little bit. I'm just gonna pop this
overly large pocket here. Other side now. Same thing one more time. I'm just taking the dough, and I'm lifting it over, folding it down, gently tapping it down. I'm giving it a tighter shape because I didn't do any stretch and folds. Well, I did one during the
course of the bulk fermentation. And I don't want the dough
to have a too wild crumb. That's a little bit of a problem
when you just do too many, when you don't do any stretch and folds. The crumb is gonna be... You'll have craters,
you'll have pockets inside, something you don't want. An open crump is great, but a
super wild crumb, not so much. Okay, I've rotated the
dough, seam side facing me. And now I'm going to start
to roll the dough upwards. I'm pulling it down, two
thumbs here, like that. My thumbs are floured. If they stick flour them again. And then I'm pushing into the dough, creating a nice dough roll. That's pretty much our shaped dough. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to seal the edges here. Same thing from the other side. Now I'm dragging the
dough a little bit more over the surface just to
give it the final shape. For this, a dough scraper
really does wonders. That's it, that's our shaped dough. I'm now just rubbing it with some flour. This makes sure the dough
won't stick to the banneton. I like this a lot more than
using rice flour these days. Plus a dries out a little bit, which means it's going to
be a lot easier to score. With one movement, I'm taking the dough. And then I'm gently lifting
it into the banneton. By the way, since this
dough was quite hydrated, I would always recommend
you to use a linen. If you go for a stiffer dough, then you could definitely
do it without as well. Being the German, I don't let any flower
go to waste, of course. And that's it. I'm now going to be covering it. I'm going to give this 15 minutes. That's one five, not 50, 15 minutes. And then it's going to
go, until the next day, into the fridge at around
four degrees Celsius. See you tomorrow. Oh, and of course here, this small sample, it's not going to waste. I really like to bake amazing
surplus bread out of this. I'm going to be linking
a video right here. Seriously, try this. This bread just has so
much amazing flavor. Definitely my favorite bread. So don't throw this away. Now this might sound super German, but what I like to do is I like to measure the
temperature of the oven. That's around 230 degrees Celsius now. Baking too hot isn't good and baking too cold isn't good as well. You can bake in a cold oven, but then you want to have a stiff dough. Well in this case, our dough is quite high in terms of water content. You need to have a good
amount of temperature. Every oven is unique. And what's shown on your display sometimes doesn't match the reality. So a good tip, get yourself one of those barbecue thermometers and just measure the
temperature of your oven. That way he will nail the
actual baking process. Super important. The dough looks very nice. It has slept over the night. We are now around 16
hours after I shaped it. I'm just sprinkling it with a little bit of semolina flour. This makes sure the dough
won't stick to the Dutch oven. I'm going to be using a Dutch
oven for the baking process but you definitely could
also just be using a stone. I made a full video of that, which I'll be linking right here. Too long, didn't watch. There's not really a big difference. It just depends on
whatever you have at home. Now, if you bake every day, then a Dutch moment like
this might be useful. Okay, so let's load this. I'm just placing this on the banneton. This makes it really so easy. And the moment of truth. Does this actually come out? Nice, that's because we
used that additional flour and that made it non-stick. Now scoring. I find scoring sometimes
to be a little bit hard. I'm not going to score in the center. I'm gonna be scoring at
around a 45 degree angle, slightly off to the center. And for scoring, you want to have one swift movement, just like I did. I did not saw. I just had one movement through the dough. And now this is going to spring upwards. Small pattern for the beauties. You see how the dough
still holds its shape. It's not getting flat like a pancake. If it's getting flat like a pancake now, then chances are that you over fermented. The gluten broke down. It can no longer hold its shape. I'll give that one spritz with water. I'm using just up or bottom heat and 230 degrees Celsius for
the bake for 25 minutes. That's where I'll have open expansion. I don't want the crust
to form too quickly. And after 25 minutes, you want to remove the source of steam just to form the crust. (clock ticking) So, 25 minutes passed. This always the moment of truth. Did we get oven spring? Did we get that nice, beautiful ear. Let's check. Nice, wow. I'm super happy with how
this turned out already. This is looking amazing. Now you have two options. What you could do is you could
measure the core temperature. Oh, shoot. That wasn't so smart. And you see it's already
above 95 degrees Celsius. So this bread, in theory, is done. You could let it cool
down and then freeze it. And you would have fresh
bread whenever you want. Or put it into a plastic bag and store it in your
fridge for a few days. And then let it finish bake at some point. This would be called par baking. Great way to always have
fresh, amazing bread. But in my case, I want
to have fresh bread now. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to put this back to the oven for another 15 minutes or so until the crust has the great color. And oh no. You know, sometimes I
just screw up too much. Anyways, back to the oven now. So the bread is done. What happens now depends on
your personal preference. How dark you like the crust to be. This is nothing that I can answer for you. This is your individual preference. For me, I like to bake this
for another 15 minutes. That's one, five minutes. Sorry for the German. Until this has the color that I want. Ta-da. Just check this out. How amazing this bread turned out. Okay, this is my fail, but
still, nice crust here. Good ear, nice oven spring. We even have a little
bit of a double ear here And from the bottom, also good crust. This really is the
perfect sourdough bread. Hmm, wow. This looks amazing. Just look at how nicely
this fermented here. Now those pockets here, they are a little bit
too wild in my opinion. Probably what I should have done is I should have given it even tighter shape. That's because we didn't
do any stretch and folds. So the crumbs tend to be
a little bit more wild. You could counter that by giving it a tighter shape or a preshaping. But looking at the fluffiness here, this turned out so good. Would you have believed that you could just not do any stretch and
folds during the whole process and your bread or turn out so amazing? Definitely something new to me. And I want to give this a taste test now. Let's see how this actually tastes. This is so fluffy. Check this out one more time. The bread is nice and
fluffy on the inside. It's a little bit moist still. Perfect consistency for the crumb. Then you have the crispness
here from the outside, paired with this ear that you get when you do everything right, this one. And then you have also
great crust from the bottom. It's just the perfect play
of different consistencies. Let's give this a shot
and see how it tastes. Wow, the flavor of this bread. This is so good. I wish I could mail you a slice. Slight tang to it, a lot of taste. It just turned out perfect. Summarizing I think is create a lot of dough
strength at the start. Make sure to also create a little bit of dough strength before you shape. That's a trick to get this recipe right. If you don't have time to
do the stretch and fold like I did around an
hour before I shaped it, you could probably also
just give this a preshape and tighter shape. That would definitely also work. I will be super curious to hear your thoughts on this recipe. What do you think? What could be improved? Do you have other tips for other bakers? Please do drop a comment
in the comment section. I am going to be finishing this now and probably the whole bread here. See you soon.
