Sourdough bread
One loaf, two days, four ingredients. Most of the time is the dough working without you.
- 170
- kcal
- 6g
- protein
- 1g
- fat
- 34g
- carbs
- Prep
- 40 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Serves
- 12
Photograph by Travel with Lenses on Pexels
Ingredients
- 4 cups bread flour
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1/2 cup active starter
- 2 tsp salt
Method
-
1
Mix flour and water only, and leave 45 minutes. This hydrates the flour and does a good deal of the kneading for you.
-
2
Add the starter and salt, and work them through.
-
3
Over the next 4 hours, fold the dough over itself four times, an hour apart.
-
4
Shape, then cold-proof in the fridge for 12 to 18 hours.
-
5
Bake at 480°F in a covered pot for 20 minutes, then uncovered for 25 more.
-
6
Cool completely before cutting. Cutting hot bread ruins the crumb.
The autolyse does the kneading for you
Mixing flour and water alone and leaving it for 45 minutes before adding anything else is the least effortful step in baking and one of the most useful. During that rest the flour hydrates fully and enzymes begin breaking down proteins and starches; gluten starts forming without any mechanical work at all.
The salt is held back deliberately — it tightens gluten and slows enzyme activity, so adding it later lets the autolyse do its job first.
Folds instead of kneading
Four sets of stretch-and-folds an hour apart, rather than ten minutes of kneading. Each fold aligns the gluten strands and traps a little air, and the hour between lets fermentation continue undisturbed. The dough visibly changes across the four sets: slack and sticky at the first, smooth and springy by the last.
Reading the dough, not the clock
Bulk fermentation times in recipes are approximations, because fermentation rate roughly doubles for every 8°C. A dough that takes four hours at 24°C takes eight at 18°C. Look for the dough to have risen by around 50%, feel airy, and hold a dome when you tilt the bowl. In a cold kitchen this takes considerably longer than any recipe says.
The cold proof
Twelve to eighteen hours in the fridge does three things: it develops flavour through slow acid production, it firms the dough so it holds its shape and scores cleanly, and it makes the whole schedule fit around a normal day. It is the step that makes home sourdough practical.
Steam, and why the pot
The covered pot traps the dough's own moisture for the first twenty minutes. Steam keeps the crust flexible so the loaf can expand fully — the oven spring — and it gelatinises the surface starch, which is what produces the glossy, crackling crust. Uncovering for the last stretch dries and colours it.
Do not cut it hot
The crumb is still setting as it cools and starch retrogradation is still happening. Cutting a hot loaf gives you a gummy, compressed slice and lets steam escape that would otherwise stay in the bread. Two hours minimum.
What it is worth nutritionally
170 kcal a slice with 6 g of protein. The long fermentation matters beyond flavour: it reduces phytate content, which improves absorption of the iron, zinc and magnesium in the flour — a real advantage over quick commercial bread. See iron-rich foods for why phytate reduction is worth having.