Making Sourdough Bread

7 daily sourdough preparation Hello again after a short silence after our adventure. Even if the sourdough we prepared was ready on the 7th day, we waited for the 10th day to see it set well and mature a little more. Make your bread after the 10th day of your yeast. In fact, as I mentioned before, on the 7th day when I saw the first enthusiastic rise of the yeast, we did not throw away the 80% that I normally throw away and kept the bread dough from it. I prepared the recipe as a blending of the information I got from different sources and it worked. It was a firmer bread than we expected, but it was a very good bread with the taste of village bread.

But it was already an experiment. While we enjoyed it, we started experimenting with a second and different recipe. The holding times of the dough in our first try were too long. This time it was shorter and we acted according to the state of the dough and the result was disappointment. It didn't happen.

Of course, because this bread is difficult and long to make, you have to start early in the morning and if you are working, you do not have a chance to make it in the evening after you come home from work. However, you can put the dough that you have fermented overnight in the closet and keep it for a maximum of 12 hours. For this, you need to roll up your sleeves early on the weekend.

Let's come to our last attempt. Well, we loved it... As you can see in the photo, he is very handsome :) In each of our experiments, we used our own ideas in the light of the steps and methods of the blogs I have read since the day I started making yeast, the suggestions in the comments of experienced visitors to the recipes and the information given by some books.

First, we start by testing the yeast. I was able to make the bread after the 10th day. We could only find time with my wife, but it was good to wait anyway. What we call the yeast test consists of taking a spoonful of your sourdough and dropping it into a bowl of water at room temperature. If your foamed yeast floats on water, it is ready to use. If it sinks to the bottom, it indicates that it is not quite ready and you need to wait for 1-2 more hours in a warm corner of the kitchen.

In general, every material and environment that you will use in bread making should always be at room temperature. Temperature changes affect the yeast's rising process, which means everything.

If you have seen that your yeast is ready, it is useful to start without wasting time, because our work is long…

After mixing the ingredients in the recipe, you will get a runny dough. This dough is unsalted yet. Since you will add the salt later, you start the process of keeping it on the side. You still need an environment at room temperature, as the dough holding processes are usually long. It is difficult to maintain a standard temperature this season.

For this, I am in Cenk (cafefernando.com) suggested, I covered it with a cloth and put a glass of boiling water in the closed oven. After waiting for 2 hours in this way, we add 20 g of water and salt. The real process starts after that. If there is such a thing as the art of folding dough, this is it :) The aim here is to make the dough fluff and increase its resistance by doing as little folding as possible. During the folding, you will notice that the air bubbles accumulating inside will burst little by little.

Let the dough rest for 2 hours during the folding process, and after adding the salt, let it rest for another half hour and pass. After that we have 5 hours. We will do the folding process every half hour in the first 2 hours and hourly for the remaining 3 hours, and we will finish with 7 folding in total and move on to the second fermentation process.

We do the folding process from 4 corners in the round bowl where you put the dough. Put your hand in the upper corner of the bowl far from you, hold the dough from the bottom, pull it up and stretch it, then close it to the middle. Then turn the bowl and repeat the same process to be applied to all 4 sides. After each folding process, cover it with a cloth and let it rest in the closed oven with a glass of hot water next to it.

At the end of 5 hours, we need to shape our dough a little before leaving it for the last fermentation. For this, put the dough in the bowl on a floured cutting board or kitchen counter. Because the dough is still runny and moist, it may stick to your hands. At this stage, turn the dough over and the floured part is on top. From the sides of the dough, at the intersection of the dough and the counter, put your hand under it and turn it into a round shape. When a full and smooth surface is formed, lightly sprinkle flour and cover with a cloth (this cover should not be too heavy so that it does not press on the dough) and let it rest for half an hour.

At the end of half an hour, the dough will have expanded a little more and grown to the sides. At this stage, we have one last folding operation left. Turn the dough upside down on the counter, first hold it under the end closest to you, stretch it slightly towards you and fold it towards the middle of the dough. After folding the right and left sides in the same way, pull the top edge and close it to the middle, then grasp the connecting ends and shrink them as you can see in the photo above. we combine. We do these processes gently, without pressing too much, so that the dough that we have raised for hours does not collapse or crumble.

We put a cloth in the dough and place it in another bowl that is richly floured, with the round smooth surface facing down. In this last fermentation part, we cover it and keep it in the closed oven for 4 hours with a glass of hot water.

Half an hour before you finish the second fermentation, take out the bowl you kept in the oven and set it aside, and put a metal bowl that will not be affected by the heat, boiling water and the cast iron pot to warm up. This boiling water will provide the humidity in the oven during cooking.

As for where to bake the bread. Cast iron is an indispensable option. We tried long bread on the baking tray, but we didn't get good results. It was successful in our 2 casting pot experiments. Therefore, if possible, a cast iron pan and a cast pan with the same diameters that can be closed on top of each other will do the trick.

I made my first attempt by covering a cast iron pan on a cast iron saucepan. It was a successful bread, but pans and pots did not fit together due to their structure. There was about an inch of space left. Normally, this type of bread is not a problem because it is baked in humid ovens, but since home-type ovens do not have such a feature, even the hot water we put in the oven is enough to balance this humidity. For this reason, they need to be closed as tightly as possible.

We baked the last bread in a cast iron pot with a glass lid, which a friend of ours had given as a gift. Thus, we were able to both see inside and bake the bread in a more humid environment.

If you have a cast iron pot with a glass lid (it should not have plastic handles or handles), just heat the pot, if you do not have one and you are going to cover two cast iron pots on top of each other, heat it by placing one in the oven and the other on the stovetop.

When the oven reaches the required temperature, the hard part begins. Because everything is hot :) and I know a lot of people who forget that the cast iron pot is hot and stick to the handle, be careful.

On the dough we set aside, cover a long piece of oily paper that you crumpled and aged in your hand, and cover it with a cutting board and turn it upside down. This is where some acrobatic moves come into play. Then hold the edges of the paper and drop it into the cast iron pot. Lower the oven temperature to the temperature specified in the recipe, close the door and put it in the oven. Bake for 25 minutes covered, 30 minutes uncovered.

After the cooking process is completed, you can take it out of the oven, put it on the cooling wire and wait for it to cool for about 1 hour, then slice it and enjoy the labor of 10 days. Of course, if you can afford to eat it. :)

Enjoy your meal…

It is quite a long and delicate recipe. In fact, I can say that it is even shorter than what happened from the day you started making sourdough to the day you eat the bread. But in the end, when you eat that bite of bread, you realize that it was all worth it.

The main starting point of the bread and the recipe “Tartine Bread” Of course, we played with the recipe and adapted it. We combined different experiences in one loaf. Anyway, no matter how hard you try and use the same recipe, in the end, the baked breads are different from each other like fingerprints. Making bread is a separate pleasure and curiosity. Otherwise, who would be so busy anyway :)

Let's put the video while the name is mentioned. Look at it that way. If you want to get the original book. With this link you can buy it.

I put the leftover sourdough in the fridge in a tightly closed jar. Actually, I never felt comfortable with this situation. The refrigerator is not a suitable environment for yeast storage conditions. In general, storing yeast in cabinets designed to kill bacteria, not to live, is counter-intuitive, but it is difficult to feed them outside every day. It happens that you are not at home, and you can also forget about it. Since you slow down the fermentation process in the refrigerator, you have the chance to feed it at least once every 3 days. There are even cabinets that produce a special temperature and environment to store such fermented products. Since the crisper parts of the cabinet are relatively warmer than the upper parts, I put them there.

The next time you plan to make bread, you can remove as much yeast as you need, feed it once and add it back to the dough after 24 hours. For better results, it would be better to remove it at least 2 days before and feed it 2 times.

Sourdough Bread Recipe

Ingredients for Sourdough Bread Making Recipe

• 100 gr sour yeast
• 325 g water (at room temperature)
• 50 g whole wheat flour
• 455 g bread flour
• 10 g salt

How to Make Sourdough Bread Making Recipe?

1. Mix the sourdough with 315 g of water and dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the flours, mix until there are no flour lumps and knead, then cover it with a cloth and leave it in a corner for 2 hours. If you think it is not room temperature, place it covered in the oven and put a glass of hot water next to it.
2. At the end of 2 hours, take the dough out, add 10 g of salt and the remaining 10 g of water, and knead it again. In the meantime, the dough may be layered as if it does not accept water. Keep kneading until you eat the salt. Cover it and put it back where you bought it and let it rest for another half hour.
3. At the end of half an hour, you can do the first folding. Insert your hand in the far side of the dough, hold the dough under it, and stretch it upwards and fold it towards the middle of the dough. Turn the bowl over and do the same on the other side. At the end of 4 rounds, cover the dough that you have folded each edge and let it rest again. Do the folding process every half hour for 2 hours and hourly for the last 3 hours.
4. At the end of the 5 hour folding process. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured kitchen counter or a large cutting board if you have one. Turn the dough over and the floured surface is on top. Put your hand under the dough and at the same time turn and round the dough. As you do this, the top of the dough will stretch and become a smooth round shape. In this way, sprinkle flour on it and lay a light kitchen cover on it and let it rest for another half hour. At the same time, set another deep bowl (similar to the one in the photo) and lay a clean kitchen cloth in it and flour it thoroughly.
5. Now we will do the final folding. Lift the dough, which is resting on the counter and spread slightly, with the help of a spatula from the side closest to you and turn it over. At this level, the dough will be very thick and puffy, making it very tender and delicate. It's full of air bubbles and we don't want them to go out. Therefore, by being more gentle, we hold the right edge of the dough again, stretch it slightly and fold it towards the middle. Then we extend and fold the lower, left and last upper parts towards the middle and turn the dough over. As in the previous step, put your hand under the dough and at the same time turn and round the dough. As you do this, the top of the dough will stretch and become a smooth round shape. Now, grasp the dough by the sides and take it in your palm, and place it in the floured bowl with the round and smooth surface upside down. This part is the beginning of the second fermentation phase. Now, cover it again and leave it in a closed oven with a glass of hot water for 3 or 4 hours if the weather is cold. Do not change the water every time. The first hot water you put in can stay until the end. You can adjust the waiting time between 3-4 hours by looking at the puffiness of the dough.
6. Now that the waiting time has expired, we can move on to the cooking phase. You can heat the oven half an hour before the waiting time expires. Remove all trays from the oven and place a single tray in the second row from the bottom. If there is a grill in the oven, it would be better to put it. Put hot water in an iron bowl that will not be affected by the heat at the bottom of the oven. This will maintain a moist environment inside the oven. Set it to 250 degrees. It is highly recommended to cook the bread in a cast iron pan. In our different experiments, we have seen that the bread baked in a covered casserole gives the best results. Heat the thin cast iron pan (24 cm in diameter and not too high rim) where you will put the dough in the heating oven and the cast deep pot that you will cover over it by placing it on the fire on the oven. After the oven light goes out, crumple the greaseproof paper that you cut in 35-40 cm lengths in your hand, put it on the dough bowl and turn it upside down by placing a cutting board on it. The dough will stay on the wax paper. Remove the hot cast iron pot from the oven by holding it with a thick washcloth or oven mitts without burning your hands, and place the wax paper on the cast pan by holding it by the edges. After you put the pan in the oven, cover the cast iron pot you heated on the stove and reduce the oven temperature to 225 degrees and cook for 25 minutes. cook it. Then open it for 30 minutes. cook more. When you turn on the oven and knock on the bread when it is well browned, if you hear a loud sound, it means your bread is baked.
7. Place the hot bread on a cooling wire or similar on the counter and cool for 1 hour.

Bon Appetit.