The Perfect Sourdough Artisan Bread - A Step-By-Step Guide | Chef Rachida

Today we're doing bread baking, artisan bread baking. Le pain de campagne, le pain au levain, it doesn't matter. The universal bread which I love, love so much because I do eat bread every day. I eat a slice of bread every day and I think the bread should be the center of the meal. The bread for me can be a meal by itself and I love making it, I love eating it. So I'm going to share with you a newer version than the one I did years ago and I shared with you on YouTube channel like three years ago I believe. This one is updated and it's a better version because I learned so much. We keep learning, we all learn from other people. In this version I'm using mostly bread flour. I'm using something like 70% of bread flour and 30% of spelt flour. You can use wheat flour, you can use anything. So I will ask you to go through the recipe, do not change anything until you're happy with it, then start playing with it. What you can do, change the flour kind and you can also change the hydration and when we say hydration meaning how much water you put relatively to the amount of the flour. Here we're going to have a hydration of 75% and I'm going to show you how to make this fabulous bread and it's crispy, beautiful, absolutely beautiful. We're starting what we call autolyse meaning going to mix the flours. I have two kind of flours here and the water at room temperature. First of all we mix the two flours so the mixing is easier. Then make sure you mix very well until there is no dry ingredient visible. We don't need to knead or anything like that. All we need just make sure there is no dry ingredient and we stop. At this moment we're going to cover our bowl with a lid and leave it at room temperature. It's better to clean up the bowl and has a little bit of water so it doesn't stick and we leave it at room temperature for three hours. What I normally do after three hours at room temperature I put it in the fridge because I do this in the evening until the next day but after three hours at room temperature while I'm feeding the starter for the next day. If you store the autolyse in the fridge get it out leave it at room temperature for between two to three hours to get it to the room temperature. Look at the transformation of the dough it's flexible it is very easy to handle and we never knead it. We did not touch it before just the time so the time is your biggest ingredient. Here we're going to add the starter. We already fed the starter we know how to do it there is a link to the video how to feed your starter and it's triple in volume you already weigh it so you pour it it is pourable because it's 100% hydration and then using a spatula you stretch it over the the dough and you just fold it. I'm not going to knead it I'm not going to punch it or do anything so I'm just going to fold the dough over the starter and cover it with the lid and wait for 5 to 15 minutes. After 15 minutes up to 30 minutes fold the dough again and this time we're going to add the salt. The bulk fermentation we did not start it yet so right now we're just preparing the dough to add the salt. You know by now that in baking and pastry we use digital scale to weigh all ingredients of course we weigh our salt we add it on the dough then here we're going to I'm going to wet my finger and push the salt inside the dough that was not a good idea I think it's just better to fold the dough over the salt and that would be enough so we just fold the dough over itself and let it sit for a few minutes although hydration is 75% which means that there is a lot of water in our dough and that's why when you fold it you don't see any volume increase so what I did here I took a piece of the dough and I put it in a jar before starting any bulk fermentation and I'm going to leave it on the side and we're going to get back to it later right now I'm going to prepare the dough for the bulk fermentation which is basically just stretch and fold so this dough was sitting for 30 minutes all we have is flour water and salt and of course the starter which is basically flour and water we have just three ingredients and we always make sure our hand they're wet with water the working space where whatever we're using here I use I'm using a platter ceramic platter and I'm trying to stretch it from the inside not from the outside and be gentle so we stretch it only when the dough wants us to to be stretched we should not force it and stretch it into a rectangle even though it's not a perfect rectangle so this first stretch and fold is called lamination but I'll just call it the first stretch and fold so please keep in mind be gentle so we're folding the dough on itself trying to keep it as rectangle as possible during this process our hands the bowl where we're going to store the dough should be clean and there is even a little bit water in it so it doesn't stick to it so here we're going to leave this dough at room temperature between 30 minutes to one hour so you can see it's completely flat there is no increase in volume so we just make sure our fingers they're wet and we're going to stretch the dough the way you see it and we fold it and we're trying to do that as a rectangle and I'm glad I have my bowl as a rectangle because it does help me to keep that shape and this is our second one our second stretch and fold one hour later our dough is completely flat make sure your spatula is wet your finger is wet and we're going to do what we call stretch and fold for the third time so all we're doing we're stretching we're being gentle with the with the dough and we're folding and we try to keep it as rectangle it just because it's more convenient that way and by the way I do clean up the bowl where I store the dough and make sure it's wet so the dough does not stick on it to it and I leave the dough at room temperature between 30 minutes to one hour so after four stretch and fold which is between 30 minutes and one hour for each one of them which is basically around two to three to four hours then we're going to shape the dough but if your dough does not feel like mine it doesn't feel light it did not increase in volume it doesn't feel like pillow please feel free to add another stretch and fold so here we're going to keep the rectangle shape and we're just going to roll it on itself so this way it's easy to shape and this is the first time we're using a lot of flour and we make sure we're going to seal the end of the of the dough of the loaf again put a lot a lot of flour and we're going to use an oval proofing basket we're going to flour it very very well mine has a liner then we're going to flip the dough inside the basket so the smooth surface will be on the bottom of the of the basket then we're going to store the dough in the refrigerator for 24 hours not for proofing we're not expecting the volume to go up but what we want is just to enhance the flavor of the dough i'm going to use something like a plastic bag to cover this proofing basket it looks like a shower cup but is made for this kind of a job and it's reusable because we really want to make sure our dough is stored correctly this is my newest vessel to bake the bread you can see that i went to so many different pots to make to bake the bread the first one was a plain case iron then i went to ceramic pots because it was lighter the case iron absolutely amazing but the ceramic is lighter then later we have this the ceramic one which has the flat base and then i went back to the case iron and now i am back to this guy it's made in england and it's made from this black or blue carbon steel so light extremely light so i'm very happy the only problem with it don't have the handles so but this is the best pot to bake bread as of today and i'm very happy with it so that's one of the reasons i would like to make i made this video so if you have anything like this this is perfect of course if you don't have none of it you just put it on a stone pizza and put some water in your oven in another container and you should be fine but i will recommend this one if you're able to find it and you're able to to buy it and when i bake this one still has some flour in it when i bake i use this basket it's quite small so it's only like nine or ten inches to help the baking process we slash the dough i'm using a regular razor and also i'm going to decorate the dough with some stencils i use the timer all the time to time the proofing to time the baking by now the oven was on at 500 degrees for at least one hour with the pot inside of it if you don't have a pot where you're going to bake your dough a pizza a pizza stone is good enough so we're going to flip the the dough over a liner i'm using a reusable silicone liner this way it's easy to move the dough on the the base of the baking pot then we're going to slash the dough with the razor at 45 degrees the angle is always 45 very fast very a simple one in the middle we get our part from the oven which is at 500 degrees the pot is very hot then you put the lid on it put it back in the oven the moment is in the oven you lower the temperature to 475 and you bake it for a good 13 minutes uh even to 45 minutes it depends on your oven so you have to keep eye on it then you remove the lid for the last 5 to 10 minutes sometime 15 minutes to get that dark brown on the surface of the loaf of bread if you have a second loaf then go ahead and bake it but make sure your oven is at 500 before you put it back and make sure your pot is also screaming hot here we're going to use my fancy stencil to to have a pattern and i'm just using the chocolate powder to decorate the loaf of bread once the loaf of bread is completely baked put it in a cooling rack so it does the bottom does not steam at this point the temperature of the loaf of bread is around 210 so we have to be patient the the loaf of bread is still baking it's not a good idea to eat it right away or to slice it so we have to wait until the inside is around 100 degrees because it's not good for your health to eat this kind of bread at this temperature and it's not digestive so we have to be patient our loaf is still baking right now it's ready to be eaten now we're going to slice into this beautiful loaf of bread and find out how we did i think we did very good look at those crumbs they're perfect our loaf of bread has a very open crumb it's moist chewy and it has a creamy texture and the crust is crispy this is a perfect loaf of bread do you remember a few minutes before starting the bulk fermentation we took a piece of dough we put it in a jar that piece of dough it tripled all we had is but there was no bulk fermentation so that's an indication that our bread is going to prove correctly even though if you're feeling like during the bulk fermentation your dough is flat when i make my own bread i make it only once or twice a month so i make a lot of loaves of bread and i feed a big amount of starter a weight like i showed you before i use those two rectangle bowls because they are very handy and since i have two of them i make you know i make two loaves of bread because of those bowls because they're handy and also i keep the size of the small it's easy to slice it easy to bake and also i measure the salt and put it next to the bowl because once a while i just forget to add salt to the dough so this is my workflow hopefully by watching this video you create your own or you'll build your own workflow also how to make it takes a long time to learn it to master it so just be patient let's eat the bread it's so good you see it's so beautiful so i hope you like this video and i hope to see you soon you know what to do like it share it leave a comment check the websites where i leave the whole post and i can adjust and fix if i if i left any steps so i hope to see you soon beautiful absolutely beautiful and there is a one thing you can make as much bread as you want i make like three four loaves of bread then i slice them and freeze them they freeze very well please remember one thing the moment the bread comes out of the oven you have to let it sit the moment it gets at room temperature you eat it right away or you freeze it there is no bread box or bread story i don't know how who came up with that idea the bread does not do well to sit in the room temperature on the refrigerator do not use the microwave to warm up your bread please don't do that freeze it when you're ready to eat it get it out of the freezer let it sit for an hour and eat it if you want it warm just put it in the oven and toast it and it's fine i hope you like this recipe as much as i did