How to make a sourdough loaf in 15 easy steps

thegeby.blogspot.com - Gluten! We loves it. Emmanuel Hadjiandreou.

This is following Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's technique. Which has worked like a dream for me. The great thing about his method is there is none of this throwing half the starter away rubbish. You don't have to waste flour. I always hated having to throw away starter.
Why is this? Effectively, once you have your live mother, you keep it in the fridge and just use a tiny bit every day to make a poolish or pre-ferment. (Yes poolish is connected to Poland. The person that invented this technique was a Polish baker living in France. Actually the French invented sourdough, someone took that to San Francisco, where they perfected their own sourdough).

As stated in the last post How to cure a sick mother, you have taken 5g of your starter, and added 50g of flour (rye is best to get it going again, white is fine too) and 50g of luke warm water. You've covered it and left it over night.
You now have 105g of sourdough starter. But overnight your starter will have lost 10g so call it 95g.

What to do now?
1) Now take 75g of it. Put the rest back in the fridge. If you are not baking again for a while, you can add it back to your original revived mother. (If you are going to bake again very soon, you can keep the 20g and feed it with 50g of flour, 50g of water, leave overnight, do the whole cycle again.)


Get out your digital scales. Because you have some don't you? Seriously you need to buy these for any attempt at efficient baking. They don't cost much. I know my American readers are resistant to scales but look! You can buy them in America too! Only 25 bucks! You can change them from ounces to grams just for this recipe.
Babes, I want you all to be gram perfect. I want you to become anal about weighing.

2) In a large bowl, add 150g of warm water to the 75g of sourdough starter. Mix well.
3) In a separate bowl add 250g strong white flour 4 g salt. Mix well.
4) Add the flour/salt mix to the sourdough/water mix. Mix well. Leave for 10 minutes, covering with the other bowl.
5) Then, ideally using a scraper, or your hands, start to shape the loaf. (This is what baker Emmanuel Hadjiandreou does instead of kneading. But it works.) Pull the side of your ball of dough outwards then tuck it into the centre. Moving the bowl around as you go, you do this 10 times going around the ball of dough. If it starts to become stiff and the dough tears, then stop.

6)Wait for the dough to relax for ten minutes, then do the pulling into the centre kneading technique again. Do this four times in total with a ten minute interval in between. At the end of this you should have a nicely smooth ball which is strong in structure and will rise. Make sure you have scraped all the dough from the sides of the bowl into your round ball of dough.

7) Rest it for one hour.

8) Prepare your proving basket (I found this type works well, it aint pretty like the others but the dough doesn't stick) or use a colander lined with cheesecloth, or a bread basket lined with a non fluffy tea towel, by dusting it liberally, up the sides too, with wholemeal or rye flour. If you've only white flour, use that. This must be well coated with flour as you don't want your loaf to stick.

9) Then dust the dough ball with wholemeal or rye flour (or white if you have nothing else). Scoop it into your already prepared proving basket or the cheesecloth lined colander.
10) Then leave this to proof for 3 to 6 hours or overnight or until doubled in size.
11) Preheat your oven to 250C. Place a shallow tray in the bottom and a flat baking tray in the middle.
12) When hot: Place the dough ball, flipping it over, onto a pre-heated baking tray, dusted with semolina.
13) Slash the top with a corrugated knife. (I always forget this)

14) Then bake at 250C, adding a cup of tap water into the hot tray placed into the bottom of the oven. This creates steam and gives you a crust. After 10 minutes lower to 220C. (If you have an Aga, put in the cool shelf) Bake for 30 minutes in all. Knock on bottom, it should sound hollow. You want a deep bassy sound. Emmanuel thinks we underbake loaves in this country.

15) Place on cooling rack. When cool, slice and enjoy. If you are impatient and can't wait till it cools, don't slice from the middle, slice from the end. While it's cooling you see, it's still baking inside, even though it isn't in the oven.
Good resources in the UK: Equipment: Bakery Bits (ships worldwide) Richard BertinetLessons: Emmanuel Hadjiandreou and others in: North West London at The Baking Lab or Nottinghamshire at the School of Artisan Food Bath: Richard Bertinet Near Edinburgh: Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters London and other places: Jane Mason's Virtuous Bread Northhampton: Juniper and Rose cookery school (lessons by Dan Lepard and Vanessa Kimbell) Flour:Shipton MillDoves Farm.
A note: The teen made her first sourdough loaf last week using this method. I do believe, after learning to read, write, count, use a computer, that teaching your kids to bake bread is one of the most useful things a parent can do for a child. It should be obligatory at school. I do recommend getting a hands on lesson if you can afford it. It made all the difference for me.

I baked these this morning. Yeah I forgot to slash again.

other source : http://youtube.com, http://www.msmarmitelover.com, http://log.viva.co.id

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