Easiest Homemade Sourdough Bread

Makes 1 Small-Medium Sourdough Bread Loaf

At the beginning of covid-19 lock-down the supermarket shelves were bare. I couldn’t get my hands on some yeast so I decided to give my own sourdough bread a go. Although it takes 5-10 days to make your sourdough starter, it’s absolutely worth it.
As I was trying to find a recipe that was easiest to follow it became quite difficult to understand a lot of them. Until I found a very straight forward recipe. Of course I simplified it even more… but now I’m baking a loaf of this beautiful bread every couple of days now! Heads up though, this bread does take about 24 hours to make but it’s very limited hands-on and only waiting time. You can have fun with this and use a mixture of flours too! I know that when wholemeal flour becomes available at the supermarket I will be giving it a go. Rye flour would also be a great addition too! The great thing about having sourdough starter on hand is that you can use it for a range of other things too. If you have no yeast then you can sub it for 100g of starter (100g starter = 7g sachet of instant yeast) but you’ll need to double the proofing time. Click here to find out what else you can use your starter for. Oh and sourdough bread is full of so so so many great vitamins and nutrients that support gut health!

Ingredients:

• 100g sourdough starter
• 250g water (boiled and then cooled)
• 395g bread flour (plain flour will also work)
• 8g salt
• Rice flour for dusting (you can use plain flour too)

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Method:

1. Place a large bowl on some kitchen scales and add in all the ingredients except the rice flour and mix well. The dough should be quite wet and sticky. Cover with foil and sit in a warm spot for 4 hours.
2. Using wet hands fold the dough over on itself about 4-6 times, cover again and set aside in a warm spot for another 2 hours.
3. Using a proofing basket, coat it generously with rice flour. If you don’t have a proofing basket like me, just use a medium-sized bowl, place a clean tea towel inside it and dust it generously with rice flour.
4. On a lightly floured bench, scrape the dough out and shape it into a ball by twisting the dough around and cupping it underneath. Place the dough smooth side down into your proofing basket, pinch together the dough so it’s as smooth as possible and place the bowl into a plastic bag or cover well with plastic wrap. Place the bowl into the fridge for 12 hours.
5. Take the bowl out of the fridge and place in a warm spot for 4-5 hours.
   Preheat oven to 230ºc. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
6. Lightly flour the dough so it doesn’t stick to your hand and carefully flip the dough out using your hand and place it onto the baking tray.
7. Lightly brush off the excess rice flour, score the dough however you please and spray the top of the dough surface with water.
8. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. Allow to cool completely before slicing.

Try eating this Sourdough bread with Homemade Butter.

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