A woman holding cut bread in her hands. A woman holding the bread in her hands.

Not sweet+bread+Yeast baking

French sourdough bread

Prep Time: 6 hrs / Cook Time: 30 min / Total Time: 6 hrs 30 min

When the house smells of bread, it becomes somehow more comfortable ...

If you are not yet friends with sourdough, then you can replace it with PULISH with ordinary yeast. The bread will be without sourness and the very aromatics of "sourdough bread", but still much more interesting and tastier than bread from the store!

Author and photographs: Olga

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French sourdough bread

Yield: 1 bread

Ingredients

Leaven (Either POLISH)

10 g wheat sourdough
50 g wheat flour
50 g water

POLISH

0.5 grams of fresh yeast
50 gr flour
50 gr water

Dough:

All Leaven
140 gr water
275 gr flour
12 gr honey
6 gr salt
12 gr butter

Instructions

Build the Leaven.

Measure water, sourdough starter, and flour into a high-sided container and stir to combine. Ferment, covered, at room temperature for 12 hours.

If you use Polish Mix everything and leave for 10-12 hours at room temperature

Mixing the Dough Add water, leaven, flour, and honey to a bowl and stir to combine with a sturdy spoon. Once combined into a shaggy mess of dough, begin to pinch and squeeze with a wet hand until well mixed (about 2-3 minutes depending on how fast you mix). Last, add salt and butter, mix until smooth, and leave for 3 hours at room temperature. Cover and begin the bulk fermentation.

Once every 30 minutes (from this 3 hours), make a fold according to the "stretch and fold" method - you can, of course, google it, but in essence, this means that we mentally divide (in our mind - not physically) our dough into 4 parts - then we take the dough with our fingers by 1 edge of 4 and stretch it up, then put to the center, then turn the plate 90 degrees clockwise and take next edge of the dough, stretch it, put it in the center. And so all 4 sides.

It is not difficult to calculate that in 3 hours you will have 5 such stretches and folds.

A woman holding the bread in her hands. A woman holding the bread in her hands.

After 3 hours of proofing - we do pre-forming - in fact, only rounding the workpiece. We leave it on the table for 20 minutes. Then - we form a loaf using the "swaddling" method. But in fact - it means, that we turn all the edges to the center and pinch.

We put our bread in the proofing basket with the seam pinched up for 3 hours.

You need to bake bread in an oven preheated to 250-260 degrees under the lid for the first 15-18 minutes and another 15 minutes without a lid.

Or (if you haven't a lid) in a preheated oven, you can ask for 5 ice cubes to create steam, and after 15 minutes open the door and let the steam out.

All.