YOUR FIRST SOURDOUGH (Sourdough Bread For Complete Beginners)

hey what's up unfortunately i think most people's first attempts at sourdough bread end in failure so in this video my goal is to show you how to make the simplest possible loaf of sourdough bread and to speak to the fundamentals of this process so that you can make a crusty rustic loaf of sourdough bread at home if you don't have a sourdough starter and you want one i made a video a couple weeks ago called how to make a sourdough starter i will definitely throw the link down in the description for that and if you don't want to sit around for two to three minutes of sourdough bread theory up front here that's the timestamp click ahead if you want to get right to business okay so you've captured and cultivated your sourdough starter and now you've moved on to the maintenance phase we are giving that starter fresh water and fresh flour on a daily basis to keep it in good shape for eventually baking bread so to go from starter to finished loaf we need to follow six stages of the sourdough process the first stage is where we take our starter from this daily maintenance stage and build it into 11 for our bread 11 is basically just a custom blend of sourdough starter flour and water that you make for an individual dough to leaven it think of your leaven as the engine for your bread this stage can take anywhere from 6 to 24 hours depending on the ratios or the temperatures and we'll call this the build stage in the second stage we combine the flour the water and all the lemon that we just mixed with some additional salt because bread without salt is gross and we call this the mix stage that's simple enough in the third stage we ferment that dough that we just mixed with wild yeast and bacteria from our 11. this produces gas in acidity we call this step the bulk fermentation we're also going to be doing some strength building folds that are really important to this process think of adding strength as like a secret ingredient that doesn't weigh anything but it's essential to creating a good loaf of bread adding strength to a dough is just as essential as adding salt without it it doesn't work okay stage four is the shape stage the bulk fermentation has given us a nice gassy blob of dough and now it's our job to organize that blob into a nice strong taut loaf of bread that will properly rise in the oven and hold itself up during the bake stage five is the proof stage this is where we continue that gas and acid production to grow the size of the loaf this is a really essential part of the process and a lot of recipes either misunderstand this part or leave it out all together and then finally stage six the bake stage that's where we bake the loaf of bread and that's pretty self-explanatory of course there's tons of ways that you can manipulate this process to make better and better versions of sourdough but think of this as like the training wheels version of sourdough bread we've taken a lot of the water out to make it so that anybody can handle it we've really upped the amount of sourdough starter as well and we're not gonna be making any fancy shapes or shooting for like pornographic instagram crun crum before we start mixing though let's talk about the tools you need to get this thing done first up you need an active sourdough starter again check the link in the description for my video on how to make one of these things next up is a digital scale weight measurements are much more accurate when it comes to making bread and as a professional baker 100 of the breads that we made were measured in grams however i will put the volumetric measurements for this recipe in the description for those of you guys without scales next you're going to need a sturdy spoon like this one then a medium bowl which i highly recommend a 12 inch stainless steel one like this it's restaurant grade it will last forever and it's pretty cheap i'm going to be mixing and fermenting the dough in this bowl behind that you need something to proof the loaves in these are linen lined bread baskets and they're great but if you don't have a proofing basket that's no sweat i'm going to be showing you another option and it'll be cheap and something you probably already have on hand next you're going to need a way to trap steam and heat around the loaf during the bake for me i use a dutch oven most of the time this one is really worn from hundreds of loaves being baked in it but if you don't have a dutch oven or you don't want to put the wear and tear on your nice one i will be showing you a cheaper lower tech option later in this video that also works just as well finally you're gonna need a way to measure temperature i have a few digital instant meat thermometers here and one of them is a laser that's dope okay now to actually make a loaf of sourdough bread we're starting with stage one of this process at 9 pm the night before we want to make our bread this stage is where we build our leaven so grab your sourdough starter in a high sided vessel and into that measure 100 grams of room temperature water or in this case 78 degrees fahrenheit or 25 degrees celsius on top of that 25 grams of our ripe sourdough starter and then 100 grams of all-purpose flour from there i'm going to stir everything up to combine it should look like thick gloppy pancake batter excellent now a lid goes on and we're going to ferment this on our countertop overnight 12 hours later this 11 is fully ripened and it's very full of life it smells sweet it's slightly acidic and to make absolutely sure that you have a ripe leaven a good trick is to grab some warm water and scoop a little bit of starter into it this is called the float test and if your starter is sitting on top of that water you're good to go now i'm going to grab my mixing bowl and i'm also going to check the temperature of the water for this dough 92 degrees fahrenheit or 33 degrees celsius is what i'm looking for so for stage 2 or the mix stage into this bowl we're going to measure 310 grams of water 200 grams of that overnight leaven that we mixed yesterday and there should be about 25 grams of that left in the container by the way we're gonna use that to perpetuate our starter from here on out so set that aside and then behind that 400 grams of all-purpose flour 50 grams of whole grain wheat flour and finally 12 grams of salt i'm gonna grab my sturdy spoon now and start stirring everything up to combine real quick i've been asked a lot in the comments from these bread videos why i use all-purpose flour instead of bread flour the shorter answer is that bread flour is too strong for me in the us where i live all-purpose flour is a very hefty 11.7 protein that is plenty to properly strengthen a european style hearth bread okay back to mixing once this dough has come together to form a shaggy mess like this we're going to lose the spoon and switch over to a wet hand now i'm just gonna jump in with my wet hand and give this a simple squeeze to combine i'm pinching and turning and folding to get all that starter and salt evenly distributed throughout the dough after about two to three minutes of this mixing it's looking pretty good but as you can see it's still sticky and shaggy and it's a total mess but it's at least a well mixed and properly combined one don't worry about this it is normal it should look kind of sticky at this point you're going to see how we get it from here to a more bread dough looking thing in a few minutes from here i'm gonna pop a lid on this and then throw it into a warm place to begin stage three or the bulk fermentation stage in this case the warm place is my oven with the light turned on and i'm gonna come back in 30 minutes after that 30 minutes you can see that there's not much action going on in this dough and that's totally fine we're going to give this dough the first of two strength building folds to do that i'm going to grab a big old grip of dough from the side i'm going to stretch it out as far as it will let me go and i'm going to fold it over to the opposite side i'm gonna repeat this move three more times one fold for each side as a reminder we're doing these folds to layer the gluten network and replicate the mechanical work that happens in a stand mixer once we got four folds done now we're gonna fold up the corners maybe do that three or four times and from there we're gonna finish this up by gripping folding and rounding this dough into a nice taut little ball i'm grabbing the bottom folding the dough in half and then tucking it up under itself to stretch the top out and that looks good now the lid goes back on we throw it back in the oven or a warm place and we check back in 30 minutes okay here we go 30 minutes later or 60 minutes total into this bulk fermentation now it's time for set two of folds this is going to be an exact repeat of what we just did that's four folds on top followed by some corner folding then a slap and fold rounding thing to get things into a nice taut ball i'm also going to check the dough temperature here as you can see mine's rolling at 77 degrees and i just want to mention dough temperature is one of the main ingredients in good sourdough bread if yours is running significantly colder than this you might want to pop your oven on for a second to get a little heat in the box that's what i'm doing here pop it off after maybe two minutes and then now you've got something that's gonna raise the dough temperature a few degrees all right after two hours or three hours total since we've mixed our dough bulk fermentation is complete as you can see this dough ball is now buoyant and alive and it's grown by about 50 to 60 percent now we're gonna move into stage four the shaping stage for that we need our loaf proofing basket that i mentioned earlier i'm gonna lightly flour that and be liberal if this is the first time you're using these baskets the dough can stick and stand by if you don't have a proofing basket i'll get to the other proofing option in a second now i'm gonna flour the dough then the work surface and then i'm going to flip the dough out we're going to cut right to the pov cam so you can see exactly what the b boy sees okay we've got our dough ball on the table ready to go i'm going to grab the bottom with some well floured fingers and then i'm going to pull that and stretch it all the way out i'm going to fold that up to close to the top of this dough blob press it down lightly and i'm going to brush off excessive flour from here now i'm going to grab the sides and stretch those out about 8 to 10 inches on each side then i'm going to fold the left over to the right side and then the right goes over to the left side tap that down brush off excessive flower oh i both bumped the camera oops now grab the top and stretch it out and fold that back towards the bottom make sure it's stuck really well from here to make sure that there's maximum internal strength we're going to fold in the corner so in goes the top left and then cross over from the bottom left and then the top right i'm going to tuck in a few more times wherever the corners are left sticking out and there we go we've got a nice tight bull shaped loaf that's definitely going to be ready to party in the oven later on now we're going to scoop this loaf seam side down into my palm then i'm going to grab the basket and plop that thing in there seam side facing up you guys from there if you want some additional peace of mind you can fold back the corners of the loaf a little bit to get that last little bit of strength and tension sealed in now to move into stage five the proofing stage we're gonna cover this with a tea towel and let it rise on the counter for about 90 minutes and if you're thinking hey brah what if i don't have a proofing basket that's no sweat you can definitely use the stainless steel bowl we just fermented our bread dough in just make sure you have some coarse non-absorbent not very sticky cloth in there i'm using some flax linen that's usually an insect barrier in my garden any improvised proofing situation will definitely need to be floured very well to prevent stickage and once you got that shaped up we're gonna pop that in there loaf seam side up and let it proof just like we did in the basket okay it's been about 90 minutes but before we look at our proof loaves let's look at the two ways we can actually bake this bread at home first is a dutch oven like i mentioned before and the combination of the lid and the cast iron give us that perfect hot steamy air around the loaf and it allows it to rise and spring the way it should i'm gonna load this thing into my oven at 500 degrees or 260 degrees celsius and preheat it for 30 to 40 minutes option two is a cheaper more rugged diy way to party i've got my ratty 20 pizza stone here i've got a cast iron pan that i filled with about three dollars worth of landscaping lava rocks and then i've got a little baking dish with some wet towels rolled up in it the rocks and the towels go under the stone and when we bake i fill both of those things with boiling water and we get tons of quick steam from the rocks and some long slow steam from the wet towels thanks to the fresh loaf bread form by the way for the inspiration for this method you guys rock okay let's take a look at this loaf it's been 90 minutes since we shaped it or roughly four and a half hours since we started this process and now we've got a nice puffy boy that's properly proofed up a good way to know whether your loaf is proofed is to actually poke it the loaf should receive the poke and barely hold on to it and then pop right back out and if your loaf isn't there quite yet don't sweat it just give it some more time we really want to make sure that this thing is fully proofed before we bake it now to bake this thing we're going to grab a little round of parchment paper that we cut i'm gonna throw down some semolina flour or cornmeal to prevent the dough from sticking to it and i'm gonna flip this loaf onto that paper seam side down next we need to create a weak spot on top of this loaf so it reaches its full potential in the oven usually a lamb or a razor blade is used but i'm assuming most beginner bakers out there don't have one of those so to keep this diy i'm gonna use scissors i'm gonna give the top of this loaf five to six rustic chops nothing too organized or special then i'm gonna scoot it to the side and grab my hot dutch oven i'm gonna lift this parchment and lower the whole loaf in put the lid on the dutch oven and i'm going to throw it back in the oven and turn the oven down to 485 degrees and bake the whole thing for 18 minutes to do this the frugal diy way i'm gonna flip my loaf out into a pizza peel or onto the back of a sheet tray with some semolina flour i'm going to give that loaf a scissoring then i'm going to slide it into the oven on the pizza stone i'm going to cover the glass of my oven door with a towel so that i don't break it and then i'm going to pour boiling water into the preheated lava rocks and then onto the wet towels and from there it's just like the dutch oven we're going to be baking this at 485 degrees fahrenheit 251 celsius for 18 minutes during that 18 minutes the loaves in the oven are going to spring upwards the cuts we made are going to provide a weak spot for all that upward energy to go without a proper score on top they're going to explode out the side and we would have a really ugly under risen loaf after 18 minutes of baking i'm gonna pull out my dutch oven take the lid off and let's take a look the loaf is fully risen it's totally ripped through the cuts that we made and it looks organic and it's kind of tough we're gonna load it back into the oven and finish baking and i'm gonna turn the oven down to 465 fahrenheit 250 celsius and i'm going to keep baking for 25 more minutes and same deal by the way for the pizza stone slash lava rocks loaf after 18 minutes we're gonna take out the steaming agents we're gonna turn the oven down to 465 and bake for about 25 more minutes now finally after that 25 minutes we've got a fully risen simple easy beautiful loaf of sourdough bread we're gonna pop it out of the dutch oven or off the pizza stone and let that thing cool for 30 to 40 minutes let's take a closer look at the crust it's dark it's blistered and it's very well set the inside of this thing is creamy and chewy and it has just a hint of acidity we did the whole thing with wild yeast that we captured and that's pretty amazing but look this loaf is not going to win any awards for the most open chrome or the deepest most nuanced sourdough flavor but it is delicious and it's a great place to start once you have success at this level there are just so many ways that you can refine and build on this process to make a bread that is so good and special that you literally can't go buy anything close to it in most parts of the world if you have any questions about this process please hit me up in the comments i try to answer as many questions as possible that are asked politely and hey before i get out of here anybody who's bought me a coffee over on kofi recently thank you very much and if you guys like this video please consider giving it a like maybe watch a couple more of my videos over there as always guys thank you so much for your time and attention thank you for sticking around and we'll see you next time

Channel: Brian Lagerstrom

Views: 2,314,177

Keywords: your first sourdough, sourdough bread, beginner sourdough, easy sourdough, sourdough for beginners, sourdough masterclass, sourdough, make sourdough bread, low hydration sourdough, sourdough starter, stretch and fold, how to fold sourdough, boule, easy bould, bread, beginner sourdough bread recipe, easy sourdough bread in dutch oven, how to make bread, bread recipe, homemade bread, baking bread, sourdough bread for beginners, weeds and sardines, brian lagerstrom, recipes, chef

Id: VEtU4Co08yY

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021