My homemade sour dough is always chewy and tough, but I love it!
[ ] Thursday
[ ] 8am - if starter hasn't been used for 4 weeks or more; feed starter 30g flour and 30g of water
[ ] Thursday evening weigh out flour and salt as below into two bowls, and cover. Get water jug, yeast and teaspoon ready. Keep starter in the fridge until needed
[ ] Friday:
[ ] 1. (8am) Mix 100g of Starter, 200g white flour, 50g wholemeal flour, 200g warm water. Mix and cover. This is the Levain, set aside somewhere room temperature - if you house is very cold you can use extra starter.
[ ] 2. (1pm) Five hours later, in a big bowl mix 100 of white flour, 300g of wholemeal flour, 10g of salt and 330g warm water. Stand for 20 minutes, uncovered.
[ ] 3. (1.20pm) Add a quarter tea spoon of instant yeast and 300g of the levain made this morning to the big bowl, mix all together (leftover levain add to starter you have in the fridge - save for next time or mix and give half to someone else).
[ ] 4.1 (2.30pm) 1st fold. Over the next 2 hours, fold the dough 3 times with wet hands. Roughly mix and blend the dough, no need to kneed.
[ ] 4.2 (3.30pm) 2nd fold
[ ] 4.3 (4.30pm) 3rd fold
[ ] 5. (6pm, approx 5 hours after step 2.) Shape into a ball and place on greaseproof paper in a large bowl. Put in fridge till tomorrow morning.
[ ] Saturday:
[ ] 6. (8am) Remove from fridge. Preheat oven and a cast-iron pot to 245 deg C
[ ] 7. Score top of loaf and place with greaseproof paper in the heated pot and bake for 20 minutes. Remove lid and cook for 25 mins more. Will sound hollow(ish) when tapped once baked. Crust should be a dark brown.
[ ] 8. Remove from pot, take off greaseproof paper and place on a rack. Cool for 20 minutes.
Besides such more elaborate recipes, after a little experimentation it is also possible to make bread with simplified recipes and preparation.
For example, in most days I make a bread to be eaten at breakfast, which needs less than 20 minutes for making, distributed over a duration of less than an hour.
It is baked in a microwave oven, which takes much less time than in a conventional oven and which is perfectly reproducible (the time depends on the microwave oven and on the amount of dough, so it must be found by experiments; in my oven @ 1000 W I use 13 minutes for dough made of 500 g of wheat flour, in a glass vessel covered by a lid).
Sometimes I add various spices, but even pure bread made only of wheat flour and water can be very good. I make the dough from wheat floor (with 12% proteins) + water having 75% of the mass of the floor. The dough is kneaded for a few minutes in a glass bowl, until becoming homogeneous and elastic. Then it is left 30 minutes, to become cohesive.
Then I wash for a few minutes the dough while kneading it, to remove a part of the starch, because I want to obtain a bread with high protein content, which causes more satiety than conventional bread, both due to the high protein content and by being more chewy. Then I bake it and I eat it after it cools enough. Of course, washing the dough is optional.
For softer bread, a leavening agent can be used. Nevertheless, when the dough is baked in a microwave oven, due to the internal heating, even the unleavened dough grows about 30% to 40% of what it would grow when leavened, due to the expansion of the incorporated air and water.
[ ] Thursday
[ ] 8am - if starter hasn't been used for 4 weeks or more; feed starter 30g flour and 30g of water
[ ] Thursday evening weigh out flour and salt as below into two bowls, and cover. Get water jug, yeast and teaspoon ready. Keep starter in the fridge until needed
[ ] Friday:
[ ] 1. (8am) Mix 100g of Starter, 200g white flour, 50g wholemeal flour, 200g warm water. Mix and cover. This is the Levain, set aside somewhere room temperature - if you house is very cold you can use extra starter.
[ ] 2. (1pm) Five hours later, in a big bowl mix 100 of white flour, 300g of wholemeal flour, 10g of salt and 330g warm water. Stand for 20 minutes, uncovered.
[ ] 3. (1.20pm) Add a quarter tea spoon of instant yeast and 300g of the levain made this morning to the big bowl, mix all together (leftover levain add to starter you have in the fridge - save for next time or mix and give half to someone else).
[ ] 4.1 (2.30pm) 1st fold. Over the next 2 hours, fold the dough 3 times with wet hands. Roughly mix and blend the dough, no need to kneed.
[ ] 4.2 (3.30pm) 2nd fold
[ ] 4.3 (4.30pm) 3rd fold
[ ] 5. (6pm, approx 5 hours after step 2.) Shape into a ball and place on greaseproof paper in a large bowl. Put in fridge till tomorrow morning.
[ ] Saturday:
[ ] 6. (8am) Remove from fridge. Preheat oven and a cast-iron pot to 245 deg C
[ ] 7. Score top of loaf and place with greaseproof paper in the heated pot and bake for 20 minutes. Remove lid and cook for 25 mins more. Will sound hollow(ish) when tapped once baked. Crust should be a dark brown.
[ ] 8. Remove from pot, take off greaseproof paper and place on a rack. Cool for 20 minutes.