Recipe: Sourdough

The Sourdough Type by Rona Simpson

Lockdown saw the rise of a smug sourdough army. Everywhere you looked on social media people were baking their own bread. The worst of them were the sourdough bakers (#smugfaces) comparing crusts. Oh just get over yourselves, I thought, and grab a perfectly good loaf from Lidl like the rest of us. This was until a friend of my partner’s gave us a dollop of ‘starter’* in a jar as a present. This came with (and this is no exaggeration) about eight pages of instructions on how to make the bread. She had named her starter ‘Sabrina’. I stared at the brown gloop in dismay. It looked as if I might need to hire a babysitter to look after my own children if I wanted to try to get things going with Sabrina. After two failed attempts and throwing away the eight pages of instructions I googled ‘Easy Sourdough Recipes’. The best one I found was by Alexandra’s Kitchen. Anyway, this is what I have learned. 1. Keep it simple. Make it fi t in with your life. I do both ‘proves’ overnight in the fridge. It’s more about judging the dough and whether it’s risen (a fair bit) than following exact timings. There is no kneading required with sourdough, just some folding. 2.

Watch videos on how to do this. It’s easy. Don’t be afraid to use your initiative and tweak recipes. I red3. uced the water required by 50-70g and my dough worked better. I don’t mess about with water temperature, or salt. I throw the salt 4. in with the fl our and use regular tap water at the temperature it comes out of the tap. Each time you uncover the bread in the oven and see the ‘spring’ is 5. like a mini birth! It’s wonderful and addictive! INGREDIENTS 400g strong white fl our 100g wholewheat fl our 9g salt 333g water 100g starter

METHOD 1. Your starter* must have been recently fed and be bubbling up. Test it by dropping a blob in a glass of water. If it fl oats, you’re good to go. (Go read up about how to keep starters. It’s a whole other article!) mix this with the water and then add your fl our and salt. Mix it all up with a fork so it’s roughly combined. Leave it alone for 30 mins with a tea towel over the 2. top. Then do the fi rst lot of folding. Do two or three more ‘foldings’ at intervals of 30 mins (if you have time, if not, just do one lot) and put it in the fridge to prove for about 12 hours. It should have risen by at least 50%. Do ‘envelope’ 3. folding and shaping (watch a video on how to do this) then shove it back in the fridge in a well-fl oured bowl with a tea towel over for anywhere from 12-48 hours – basically until you have time to bake. The dough should look quite puffy. Put a casserole 4. dish in the oven and heat to 230 degrees. Cut a round of baking parchment out onto which you fl op out your dough. Cut the dough a few times with scalpel or sharp knife. This is to let the steam escape. Place dough carefully into the hot casserole dish and bake for 30 mins covered and 5 mins uncovered. Let it rest for an hour before cutting into and 5. enjoying. Congratulations, you are now a ‘Sourdough

Type’! *A ‘starter’ is a fermenting bit of gloop that you use to make the bread rise instead of yeast. And it gives it its traditional ‘sour’ fl avour.