In a previous post about how to think about bread, I discussed the importance of the hydration of bread dough relative to the structure of the final baked bread:
“The amount (by weight) of liquid in bread dough, expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight, is called the “hydration” of the dough. The hydration of bread dough determines the final texture of the baked bread – this is an incredibly important detail to consider when you’re trying to make bread to your liking. What separates bagels from sandwich bread from baguettes from ciabatta is basically the hydration of the dough – drier dough (less hydration) generates a denser texture in bread (bagel dough has a hydration of about 50%) – wetter dough (more hydration) generates an airier texture in bread (ciabatta dough has a hydration of about 85%).”
When making a sourdough bread, the yeast comes from the sourdough starter – the sourdough starter is made from flour and water – and my sourdough starter has been maintained throughout its life cycle using equal parts by weight of flour and water. In other words, my starter culture is a 100% hydration dough. Knowing this makes it very easy to control the hydration of my bread dough because I know that the weight of the starter going into my dough will be half flour weight and half water weight. I wanted to address this up-front because it comes into play in the preparations of both of the bread doughs I will examine below.
The first two breads that I baked with my sourdough starter had a 60% hydration. This level of hydration makes a dough that is fairly easy to work with; and it is also very easy to work out the amounts of flour and liquid to use (thank you Michael Ruhlman for this simple approach!).
To get a sourdough starter bread dough with a 60% hydration, you mix:
1 part by weight of starter
1 part by weight of liquid
2 parts by weight of flour
Here’s how the math works using 8 oz. of starter:
Starter – 1 part – 8 oz. = 4 oz. flour + 4 oz. water
Water – 1 part – 8 oz.
Flour – 2 parts – 16 oz.
If you add-up the component parts, you get 12 oz. water + 20 oz. flour. The hydration of the dough is the amount (by weight) of liquid in bread dough, expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight: 12 oz. water / 20 oz. flour = 60%.
I added some salt to my bread doughs for flavor and added some olive oil for a softer texture. In the first bread, I also added a bit of honey to complement the tastes of the whole grains. In both loaves, I used 8 oz. starter + 8 oz. liquid + 16 oz. flour. I used water for the liquid in my first bread and buttermilk for the liquid in my second bread.
Aside from relying on the natural yeasts in the starter culture to give rise to these loaves, the basic technique I used in making my breads was largely unchanged from how I proceeded in the commercial-yeast-bearing loaves I chronicled in earlier bread posts. The only significant departure from my experiences with commercial yeast came with the rising times for these loaves. Since the wild yeast act more slowly in these doughs, the rise from carbon dioxide formation takes a LOT longer. My breads took about 6 hours for their initial fermentation rise and probably could have used a full 5 – 6 hours in their final proofing rise (i.e. more than the 3 – 4 hours they actually got).
I used a hefty amount of starter in my loaves. Many books on sourdough breads recommend using less starter and MUCH longer fermentation and proofing (i.e. rising) times. With a less developed starter culture, the retarding of the fermentation allows flavors to develop in the bread – but my starter is very strongly flavored as-is and I don’t think my breads would benefit significantly from taking 24 hours from mixing bowl to oven.
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First Loaf – Whole Grain Boule (Shaped Like a Ball) – 60% Hydration
1 part starter – 8 oz.
1 part spring water – 8 oz. (for a total of 16 oz. or 1 lb. on my scale).
2 parts flour – 16 oz. – 1 lb. For this bread I used 4 oz. whole grain wheat flour + 4 oz. whole grain rye flour + 8 oz. bread flour.
Once I combined the starter, water, and flour, I mixed the dough until it came together then I let it rest for about 30 minutes (longer is fine). This rest period is called autolyse – a time-out for the dough before kneading during which the flour is given time to fully absorb the water (i.e. to hydrate) and gluten can begin to develop.
After about 2 minutes of mixing, the dough has just come together to form a stiff dry ball.
Autolyse here. A resting period with a sheet of plastic cling-wrap covering the bowl so my dough doesn’t dry-out.
The same dough here, after about a 45-minute rest – though barely visible, you can see that the dough looks less dry than before as the water is fully incorporated into the flour.
Salt and fat inhibit gluten formation in dough. The autolyse period gives the dough a head-start to begin gluten formation in the absence of these ingredients. Once the dough is hydrated and rested, it is ready for the addition of the otherwise gluten inhibiting ingredients and kneading.
I added a generous tablespoon of flaky sea salt for flavor – and because my salt crystals were so huge, I mixed them with about a tablespoon of water before adding them to my dough to help them fully incorporate into the dough (had I used table salt or some other fine-grain salt, I would have reduced my amount to less than a tablespoon and eliminated the moisturization step). I also added a few tablespoons of olive oil (I didn’t measure it out) and couple tablespoons of honey (I didn’t measure it out). Salt and honey for flavor. Olive oil for texture.
As you can see, my salt is large and flaky.
To insure my salt fully incorporated into my dough, I mixed my 1 Tbsp. salt with about 1 Tbsp. of water to help it disperse and dissolve fully.
So here is my hydrated dough, after the autolyse period, with my salt, oil, and honey added.
I kneaded my dough for 10 minutes. Because of the rye flour in this dough, the dough is VERY sticky. You can see the dough sticking to the sides of my mixing bowl here.
Rye Flour – I mentioned in my post on sourdough starter that rye flour and water can be a very worrisome combination. Even with the little bit of rye flour I used for this bread, the dough was annoyingly sticky.
Kneading Time – For all of my breads I have recommended a kneading time of 10 minutes with a stand mixer and dough hook. I will address why I always go with a 10 minute kneading time in my discussion of the white sourdough loaf below.
With some difficulty, I was able for form the sticky dough into a ball – I placed it into a well-oiled mixing bowl.
I covered my dough and left it to rise until it had doubled in size.
Roughly doubled in size – nearly 6 hours later.
The dough was too sticky to deflate and work with on a clean counter top (the way I normally like to shape my dough before the final rise). I had to use a little bit of flour for even basic manipulation and shaping. Also, the hydration of the dough kept the dough from maintaining a self-supporting ball (“boule”) shape – the best I could manage with my dough was a disk shape.
With a little flour and a bench scraper, i was able to gently work with the dough to form a flattened disk for this free-form loaf.
My “Cloche” – a bell-shaped clay baking vessel for breads.
Cloche Notes – Using a cloche gives you some of the characteristics of baking in a professional bread oven. Steam from the dough is trapped initially in the bell-shaped top of the cloche which helps the bread develop a thick crust. The dome is removed after some time to allow the crust to harden. Many people used a dutch oven to achieve the same effect. The recommended method for baking in a cloche or dutch oven is to heat the vessel in a hot oven before inserting the dough for baking – the intense heat contributes to an aggressive initial rise called oven spring. Since this was my first free-form loaf, I decided to forego the perils of dough transferrence this time and placed the cooking device with my dough into the oven un-pre-heated.
I placed my deflated dough on the bottom side of my cloche, that I had oiled and sprinkled with semolina flour (as directed). I covered the dough with the top of the cloche and allowed my bread to rise in the baking device itself.
Three hours later, there was noticeable rise and I decided to bake my bread.
In hindsight, I should have allowed my bread to rise much longer. The final bread I got was a little dense – not sufficient airy. This dough needed more rise from carbon dioxide development. I was impatient.
Before baking, I slashed the top to allow the crust to expand as it rises in the oven.
In hindsight here, I was overzealous in my slashing. My slashing was so broad across the top of the loaf that it encouraged some splitting from slash-to-bottom. Apparently, a little slashing goes a long way.
I baked my inaugural sourdough loaf at 450° F with the top of my cloche on for 30 minutes, then I removed the cloche and continued baking until the interior of my bread reached 200° F as measured by my digital instant-read thermometer. Some books recommend starting the bread out at even hotter temperatures, especially for pre-heating an enclosure for the bread (like my cloche).
This is my final loaf. Fragrant. Thick crunchy crust. Noticeable split on the sides where I slashed too much.
And this is the interior of my bread. Sure you can see pockets where carbon dioxide formed, but the interior of the loaf should have been more open than this.
This was largely a proof-of-concept loaf. I wanted to see that my sourdough starter was sufficiently well developed to give rise to a loaf of bread. The only reason my first loaf failed to fully rise to the occasion was because I failed to give it enough time to proof before baking it. The taste: incredible and very sour. Surely I could have used a less mature starter culture to make a loaf of bread, but the taste couldn’t have compared to the taste of this bread.
My first sourdough bread really held the taste of those beloved San Francisco sourdoughs. At least the half of the loaf I ate by myself had that taste, I can’t speak for the other half.
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Second Loaf – Unbleached White Loaf – 60% Hydration
Since I had experience baking traditional loaves using commercial yeast, I probably should have started with this loaf. I got caught-up in free-form whole grain artisanal bread fever and couldn’t help myself. With that out of my system, I applied myself to a simpler form.
Most of my techniques here are identical to the ones I documented above.
After using the 8 oz. of starter for my multi-grain boule, I refreshed my starter with bread flour to transition to a starter that was fundamentally white bread flour (i.e. to minimize the remaining wheat and rye).
For my liquid this time, I chose to use buttermilk – milk softens the crumb in baked bread and I figured the extra tartness of the buttermilk could only make things better.
If you use liquid milk or buttermilk, it is important to scald the milk first to kill certain enzymes and denature certain proteins in the milk that can interfere with gluten formation. Heat-dried milk powder doesn’t present these potential problems so breads can be made with milk from powder with no problem. Many sources incorrectly state that the purpose of scalding milk in old recipes was to insure pasteurization – while it may have also taken care of that in the process, there is a necessary scientific function from the point of view of dough development as well. If you use any form of liquid milk in your bread – always scald it first (then cool before using).
I microwaved 8 oz. buttermilk for 90 seconds. Buttermilk tends to separate when heated. Just stir it to re-incorporate.
Same proportions of ingredients as before: 1 part by weight of starter + 1 part by weight of liquid (buttermilk, scalded and cooled) + 2 parts by weight of flour (unbleached white bread flour). Same tablespoon of salt dissolved in a little water and a generous squirt of olive oil added after the autolyse period. No honey in this loaf.
Here is the initial mix of my dough after a 1 hour autolyse period.
Let me finally address the length of time you should knead your dough. I have made an ongoing recommendation that you should knead dough using the dough hook in a stand mixer for at least 10 minutes. My time recommendation has not been arbitrary.
Bakers recommend that dough be kneaded “to translucency” or “until it passes the windowpane test.” This is a physical and visual test you can use to determine if sufficient gluten has developed in your dough to give it an elasticity capable of supporting lift from the carbon dioxide generated by the yeast. To perform the test, you simply take a small piece of your kneaded dough and insure that it can be stretched thin without breaking – “thin,” here is defined as being thin enough to be translucent.
In my own experience kneading dough and baking bread, it is much easier to utilize this test with dough made from white flour. Whole grains tend to cut into the stretched dough whenever I have tried this test with a wheat or rye doughs. But since I am confident from my experience with white flour doughs that 10 minutes of kneading can produce a stretchy and elastic dough, I have adopted that timing as a guideline for all of my breads.
After a period of autolyse and 10 minutes of kneading, I break-off a small piece of my dough.
If it can be stretched thin enough to be translucent, then it has passed the windowpane test and should be elastic enough to support a healthy rise.
Through the windowpane of dough I have stretched-out above, you can see a few dots of whole grain from the sourdough starter. Moving from one type of bread to another, I try to transition my sourdough starter culture first to the same proportion of flours I plan to use in the bread I’m making. Even though I fed my starter for two days with white bread flour before making this bread, there was still a bit of rye and wheat remaining. Every starter has a past – that’s what makes it unique and interesting. And in this case, the past shows up as specks of rye and wheat grains in the stretchy dough X-ray above.
After kneading, I let this dough rise until it doubled in size – about 6 hours. This dough was less sticky and much easier to handle than the wheat and rye dough I started with. After the initial fermentation and rise period, I deflated the dough by coaxing it out onto a clean counter (no flour necessary this time) and gently kneaded it a few times before shaping it and placing it into my loaf pan. I used a 1 lb. loaf pan, even though the quantity of flour in this dough exceeded 1 lb. (see “Guideline 2” here).
I let the dough proof (the second rise) for 4 hours and prepared it for baking.
Here is the dough after proofing. I need to score the top so it can fully rise in the oven, and I’m planning to brush the top with milk for a soft crust.
Ready for the oven. Top slashed (not so aggressively this time) and brushed with milk.
For the more traditional loaf form, I reverted to the traditional loaf baking mentality: start the dough in a hot oven (425° F) for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature (375° F) and continue to bake until the bread reaches an internal temperature of 200° F. The total baking time for this loaf was about 40 minutes.
After baking, I allowed the bread to cool in the bread pan for 10 minutes then removed the loaf and allowed it to cool 2 hours before slicing.
Sourdough loaf made from unbleached white flour.
Definitely more airy – possibly due to the extra hour of proofing and the added support from the sides of the loaf pan.
The bread was soft and deliciously sour. Although I think a longer rise before baking would have generated a better loaf, I can’t complain about the taste and rising potential of my sourdough starter.
I am still feeding my starter culture every day. My culture has been developing for nearly two months now and is extremely sour and active.
I’m planning to bake a sourdough wheat loaf with blue cheese and walnuts for Thanksgiving. I know now how I need to plan ahead and allow time for that loaf to rise a little bit more before it goes into the oven. Stay tuned. I will definitely give a report on how that bread turns out.
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