Sourdough 101

When you first wake up, make your levain. Levain is essentially freshly fed sourdough starter that will grow to be the 200g you need for your final product. Mix together your starter, bread flour, whole wheat flour, and water. Cover and leave in a warm place (where you keep your starter) until it is bubbly and doubled in size, around 5 hours. You can know you have enough when you have 200g so sometimes I will weigh to be sure and that helps me know that I am ready to proceed with the next step.

An hour before your levain is ready to use, mix bread flour, whole wheat flour, and All purpose flour with 730 g of warm water. You can use a "squeezing" technique to incorporate the water (I suggest watching The Bread Code Youtube to show exactly how to do that technique). Once the water and flour are full incorporated, cover and let rest for 1 hour. Everything you do from this point on will be to create stronger and stronger dough.

After 1 hour, add 200 g of your levain to your dough mixture, spreading it out over the top of the dough. Repeat the squeezing technique until the 2 are full incorporated. Wait 30 min, and then add the salt, incorporating using the squeezing technique again. The dough will still be very sticky, so I like to use a little bit of water on my hands throughout this process to make it a little easier. Adding the salt strengthens, tightens and compacts the gluten protein network. Cover and let rest for 30 min

Bench kneading is a process that helps strengthen the dough even more by using a dough scraper to stretch and fold it over itself (again, I suggest watching The Bread Code youtube to see exactly how to do this technique)

Similar to bench kneading, lamination is another technique of stretching and folding the bread dough to build strength. The Bread Code youtube shows exactly what this should look like if you want an more in depth look. After performing the lamination technique, I divide the dough into 2.

Next you will do a series of coil folds to each of your 2 doughs which is a simple technique that again, helps your bread build strength. You will do a total of 3 coil folds, 45 min apart. So,
1 coil fold, cover and let rest for 45 min (1:30pm)
1 coil fold, cover and let rest for 45 min (2:15pm)
1 coil fold, cover and let rest for 4 hours. (3:00pm)

One at a time, dump your dough out on a clean surface. You will see that one side of the dough is stickier than the other. Have the sticker side facing up and fold each side of the dough into itself. Watch this video to see exactly how that technique is performed. I like to also use my bench scraper to form it even more into a ball. Repeat with second dough. Add flour (most recipes suggest rice flour and I find it works well) to your bannetons and carefully scoop your dough into each one. Dust with a little more flour, cover and put into the fridge.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees and add your dutch oven or bread oven to the oven so that it is hot. Remove bread from fridge (one at a time, don't remove the second loaf until you are ready to cook it). Carefully transfer bread to a piece of parchment paper and dust with more flour. Score your dough using a lame- I like to just do a curved line down each side with some other lines coming off of it, but you can really do what you want. The Bread Code suggesting also cutting at a 45 degree angle.
When oven is preheated, transfer parchment paper to bread or dutch oven and add 1-2 ice cubes underneath and cover. This will allow for steam to be created. Cook for 20 min with the lid on, and then remove lid and cook for another 7 min or until the top is golden brown. Repeat with second loaf. Enjoy and make one of my many many toast recipes with your delicious homemade sourdough!