Sourdough Bread Recipe
May 18th, 2012 | By Cecilia | Category: baking and desserts, blog, cook something
Benjamin Baker's Authentic Sourdough Bread
Benjamin Baker, Executive Chef at Travaasa Hotel and Spa in the Texas Hill Country, is a seventh generation San Franciscan who knows a thing or two about sourdough bread. In fact, he uses sourdough starter handed down through the decades to make his signature loaves and rolls.
He was kind enough to share his recipe for the starter and a sourdough loaf with Field & Feast.
NOTE: To make this bread, you’ll have to start about a week in advance. Start the starter one weekend, and make the bread the next. Once you have the starter made, gorgeous sourdough loaves and rolls are at your fingertips.
Ingredients
- 1/2 Cup of starter (recipe below)
- 3/4 Cups of Water (spring or distilled is best)
- 2 Cups of High Gluten Flour (bread flour)
- 1 1/2 tsp Salt (kosher is fine)
Process
- Add ingredients in the order listed (always the salt last)
- Mix until a soft dough. Turn out onto a floured counter and knead for about twenty minutes.
- Shape into a loaf and place onto a baking sheet.
- Create a moist environment for your loaf, so it does not dry out and crack. This could be in your oven (turned off) with a small pot of steamy water inside, moistening the atmosphere. Or I will build a mini proof box, by staging small cups at the four corners in my sheet pan, then inverting another sheet pan on top. I then wrap the entire contraption with plastic wrap from both sides, making sure that there is no gaps for air to flow through.
- Place your bread to rise in a place roughly 80-85 degrees Fahrenheit
- Allow for your bread to double in size (a really active yeast could go further than that)
- Preheat Oven to 400 degrees, and place a cast iron pan on the lower rack (below the rack your bread will bake on)
- Boil some water on your stove.
- Score your bread with a sharp knife lengthwise down the loaf.
- Place your loaf in the oven.
- Pour some hot water into your cast iron pan to create a steamy environment
- Bake for 20 minutes at 400, then turn down to 375 for ten minutes.
- Bread should temp out at about 180 degrees
- Let cool and enjoy!
Sourdough Starter
These are the basic steps to starting a starter. Honestly it can take a number of tries before you arrive a one that really works for you, and tastes good, too. Do not fret, practice and persistence will produce the results that you are looking for.
In a bowl
- Take about 1/3 cup of flour and work in roughly 2 tbsp of water (spring or distilled is best).
- Mix until this forms a soft dough.
- Knead this dough for about ten minutes, to develop it’s elasticity (gluten development).
- Place in a bowl and cover with damp towel.
- Set in a slightly warm spot for a few days (80-85 degrees Fahrenheit).
- Remove external crusty bits from dough and reserve the remainder.
- Mix the remainder with roughly 1/4 cup of water, and a half cup of flour (6. and 7. are the refreshing process).
- Repeat the kneading process.
- Allow to sit for another 2 days, covered with a damp cloth.
- Repeat the refreshing process, this time with roughly 1/4-1/2 cup of water, and a full cup of flour.
- Allow to sit once more for about 8-12 hours.
You may use this to make your bread; always reserve some of your starter to refresh, in order to keep your culture alive.
hi there, i am making this bread right now but, i wasn’t sure if the dough is suppose to be soupy really wet?and the salt is that tbs or tsp?
Medina–
Thank you for your comment.
The recipe Chef baker provided calls for 1 1/2 TBS salt to make the sourdough loaf. As far as the starter, it can take several tries to get that right.
Chef Baker described the starter as being more dough-like than soupy–although many sourdough starter recipes do produce a soupier end product.
I will contact Chef Baker and see if he can help guide you thorugh the process. Although, I seriously doubt he will be able to reply this evening. Fingers crossed.
Hang in there,
Cecilia
Oh My, after looking over the basic Sourdough bread recipe i have found some mistakes.
I was writing this up on a deadline and did not proof read the recipe very well.
For the Basic Sourdough bread the water is double the amount that you would need, and the salt should be tsp.
Please forgive me for not double checking this before I sent this to Cecilia…..
Here goes…
1/2 Cup of starter (recipe below)
3/4 Cups of Water (spring or distilled is best)
2 Cups of High Gluten Flour (bread flour)
1 1/2 tsp Salt (kosher is fine)
I hope this has not discouraged anyone to much.
The making of the starter is a tough road, but once you have a vital starter, the bread recipe is very simple, as long as you have the correct ratios.
Sorry.
Ben,
First, Happy Birthday!
Second–these things happen. Thanks for the update. I will make the changes to the recipe itself by this afternoon.
Cecilia
As somebody who bakes bread ( sourdough mostly ) on a regular basis I always get frustrated when I see recipes measures in volume rather than weight. Both flour and salt can vary vastly in quanitities between brands when measuring by volume.
by weight I use the following :-
500g Flour ( I usually use king arthurs bread flour )
350g Water
100g starger
15g salt
you can either knead it by hand/machine and make it like traditional bread ( takes longer for the proof stages than commercial yeast ) or mix it briefly and leave overnight similar to no-knead bread. Can even let it proof in the fridge over a few days.
as for creating your own starter, The most reliable results I had was using the instructions from this site ( my current starter I used his instructions and its three years old now ) – http://www.sourdoughhome.com/startermyway.html
Once the starter is ready to make dough, I see that you will use 1/2 cup of it to start your bread loaf. How much starter will that leave you with?
Then when you replenish your starter, as you mentioned on the radio today, what starter step do you begin at? And are the amounts int the steps the same when replenishing as when you first created the starter.
Thanks! I was just getting my bread book to look up sourdough starters when I heard ‘Field and Feast’ come on the air. I’m not going to take a chance on anyone else’s starter. I will use yours Ben!
Thanks for being so generous.
Ann
In a bowl
Take about 1/3 cup of flour and work in roughly 2 tbsp of water (spring or distilled is best).
Mix until this forms a soft dough.
Knead this dough for about ten minutes, to develop it’s elasticity (gluten development).
Place in a bowl and cover with damp towel.
Set in a slightly warm spot for a few days (80-85 degrees Fahrenheit).
Remove external crusty bits from dough and reserve the remainder.
Mix the remainder with roughly 1/4 cup of water, and a half cup of flour (6. and 7. are the refreshing process).
Repeat the kneading process.
Allow to sit for another 2 days, covered with a damp cloth.
Repeat the refreshing process, this time with roughly 1/4-1/2 cup of water, and a full cup of flour.
Allow to sit once more for about 8-12 hours.