Mistakes Most Beginner Sourdough Bakers Make

Personally, I think baking sourdough bread from scratch is the most rewarding thing you can do in the kitchen. There's really nothing better. But with that reward comes a direct correlation to a lot of pain and agony and failure and screw-ups. It's just part of the game. And over the years, I've seen every type of screw-up when it comes to sourdough bread. And really, it's part of the journey. So today I wanna do a one-dish breakdown or a one-loaf breakdown in this case on sourdough bread baking to really give you the confidence on your sourdough journey and show you all the tips you need to make incredible sourdough at home. So the first tip for making great sourdough bread at home and probably the most underrated thing to the entire process is having a really healthy, active sourdough starter. This is the life force of your bread. This is the yeast. This is what gives it flavor. This is what gives it its rise. And without having a healthy starter that's super active, you're just not gonna get great results. And I can't tell you how many people send in their bread. And instantly, I can just tell that their bread results weren't great because they don't have an active sourdough starter at home. They might feed it a few times, they start off the process, and it's not up to the level to make really good bread. So you wanna be feeding this thing once a day, ideally twice a day, once in the morning, once at night. And really, all a sourdough starter is is a combination of flour and water in equal parts mixed together to create a culture for the wild yeast and the bacteria in your environment. And this right here is the original way bread was made for thousands of years. And the reason people are going back to sourdough, more flavor, longer fermentation, healthier for you compared to just a dry active yeast, which is gonna be a quicker fermentation. You're not gonna get the flavor and you're not gonna get those health benefits from the long fermentation, the breakdown of that gluten. So the first thing you're gonna do in the sourdough process is refeed your sourdough starter. You probably fed it some flour and water the day before and it's consumed all of the sugar from the starch. The yeast needs more food to activate. But what I like to do is rather than just pouring this out into the trash can is I chop up a little bit of chive action or some scallions. I get a pan on medium heat and I pour in my sourdough starter to the pan and just fry that up because that is just good fermented dough right there. Fried dough, delicious. I add some of the chives, add a little spice. This time I'm adding some za'atar. I have a whole video on this. You can click above if you want the details. But the key is just don't throw out your sourdough starter when it's not activated. You can use that, it's delicious. This thing right here is one of the best things you'll ever taste. It's just fermented fried bread with a little bit of spice, a little bit of scallion. You can dip it in some sauce, makes a great breakfast or really just a delicious snack. Mm, so good. So now that we've made some room in our jar, we've got a little bit of starter at the bottom and we're going to refeed this. And I'm gonna use equal parts flour and water. So I'm gonna use 75 grams of flour and 75 grams of water. And I use a chopstick to just mix this up. I find it works really nicely until it's fully incorporated and ready to go. You're totally fine to put the cap on your starter and just let that activate for around three to five hours at room temp. Tip number two is making sure you auto-leash your bread, which is a step that a lot of people skip over, but it's so crucial for the gluten structure of your dough. So you might be asking yourself, what is gluten structure? Well, it's pretty simple. Gluten is made up of two main proteins. So these proteins are in your flour. You've got gliadin and you've got glutenin and they're both different shapes. And when you add water to your flour, basically these two proteins, they bond together. And when they bond together, they form gluten. And gluten is amazing because there's these little pockets in between these bonds where the CO2 can be trapped. And gluten is special because it stretches out. So when that fermentation happens and the CO2 is released, it gets caught in here and stretches out the gluten structure. And that's how your dough expands. And by auto-leashing your dough, you're going to be starting that whole process. Before we auto-lease our bread, we need to learn one more thing, which is tip number three, using baker's percentages. And baker's percentages are great because you can easily calculate the hydration level of your dough. And also it's easy to expand your recipe and make multiple loaves. That's why bakers use baker's percentages. So to make it really easy, we're going to use 1,000 grams of flour for this recipe. And everything goes off the amount of flour. So if you have 800 grams of water, that's 80% hydration. It's a really easy calculation. If you want 75% hydration, 750 grams of flour. And then the other two ingredients are just your starter. And that's 150 grams of starter, which is 15%. We're still going off the flour. And then 2% salt would be 20 grams of salt. So everything is really easy to calculate and to manipulate and to expand if you're using baker's percentages. So I'm going to take out the scale and start weighing my flour. And again, we just have to get up to 1,000 grams of flour so you can add whatever flours you want. And I'm just going to add a mix. I've got around 600 grams of white flour. Then I added around 300 grams of whole wheat flour. And then the last 100 grams was just a little bit of spelt flour and some einkorn flour that I had lying around in the pantry. So tip number four is just lowering the hydration level of your sourdough bread. So like we said before, the hydration is just the percentage of water to the dough. And when you're dealing with sourdough, it's a very wet dough. So it's really tricky to deal with. It's not like a pizza dough that you're used to where it's nice and firm and you've got no stickiness. So most people will go off a recipe that will be like 80% hydration and they've never dealt with a wet dough and they run into some sticky situations later on, which we will get to soon. So what I suggest is going down to around 70%, maybe 75% hydration level if you're a beginner. And although your final bread might not be as airy as an 80% hydration bread, it's going to be so much easier to deal with and you're going to save yourself a lot of trouble by just lowering the hydration a little bit. So I'm going to add my water to my flour and I'm going with around 77% hydration because I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this for a while. And then I'm just going to stir those together. And this is your autolyse process. You're not kneading it. You're just bringing these two ingredients together until they form this little mass right here. As long as the flour and the water are incorporated, you're good to go. You can just let that sit. So now we got to check back in on our starter. It's been a few hours at room temp and it's activated, but the question is, when do you use your starter? When do you add it to the dough? And that is tip number five, knowing the proper point to use your starter. So you really want to use your sourdough starter when it's at peak activation. And to know that point, there's a few things you can look out for. One, it's going to at least double in size. You can see this is almost tripled in size, maybe even quadrupled in size. This thing is super active. And also you can see it's still slightly rounded at the top of the starter. And that's a really good sign that it hasn't started to deflate yet. So it's still feeding off the flours. It hasn't completely run out of food. And it also has a really nice tangy smell. I guess nice, you know, depending on if you like that sourness, but the smell should be a bit tangy at this point. Another technique you can use to check if your sourdough starter is ready is the float test, where you just take a scoop of starter. You put it in some water. And if it floats, you know you at least have something that's going to make bread. So now that our sourdough starter is ready and activated, we are going to add that to our auto-lease dough. So we're going to pour 150 grams of the starter over the dough. And then we're going to add our 2% of salt, which is just 20 grams to that. And just start folding that in together. Start mixing that in until it's incorporated. And it's not going to be smooth at all because we have all that salt and we have different textures between the starter and the dough, but don't worry as that sits. And as you work on the dough, it's going to completely change. I want to take a quick break from sourdough to thank the sponsor of this video, which is Audible. And I've been using Audible and crushing audio books for years now. I love getting in the kitchen and doing some home cooking while listening to a good audio book. And right now I'm listening to an epic one by Ed Levine. The creator of Serious Eats. His book is called Serious Eater. And it's just a joy to listen to. The way he describes food is incredible. It makes me happy. And also just hearing about the explosion of food blogs in the mid 2000s, I find really interesting being in the food space. So right now for a limited time offer, you can get Audible for just $6.95 a month. That's more than half of the regular price. Choose one audio book and two Audible originals, which are Audible exclusive titles created by celebrated storytellers, all absolutely free. Visit audible.com slash ProHomeCooks or text ProHomeCooks to 500-500. It's that time of the year for gift giving and an Audible membership would make an incredible gift for your friends, your family, or even yourself. So make sure you head over to audible.com slash ProHomeCooks or text ProHomeCooks to 500-500 for your discount. Now back to some sourdough. So we are officially fermenting Once the starter hits the dough, fermentation has begun. And now we move into developing that gluten structure, really working on the dough through a stretch and fold process, which is gonna be about two hours long. So every 30 minutes, you're gonna be repeating this stretch and fold process. And you're gonna see each stretch and fold, your dough is gonna be completely changing texture. And that's a great sign that your gluten is continuing to develop. You're creating a stronger dough. And that brings us into tip number seven, which is knowing when your stretch and fold process is done. And you'll see, once we get to that fourth stretch and fold, the dough has completely changed. It's smooth, it's supple, it's starting to pull away from the sides a little bit. And you can see the rounded edge on the side of your dough. That's a good sign that the structure is beginning to form. Whereas beforehand, the dough would have just sunk completely into the sides and made a flat surface. So you're looking for all of these little key elements to know that you have developed the structure of your dough. So now that we're done the stretch and fold process, we're moving on to the bulk rise, which is where you really develop the volume in your dough, some of that gas through the fermentation. And the best part about this, which is tip number eight, is that you can do it around your own schedule. A lot of people think sourdough bread is something they can't obtain because it's a long process. And yes, it is long, but you can fit it into your schedule because of the slow fermentation process. You can work with the fermentation. So when I was finished my stretch and fold process, it was later on in the day, and I didn't have time to let this sit out at room temperature and rise. It would take about four to six hours. So what I did was I threw it in the fridge and let it ferment overnight because it's colder in the fridge. It's gonna slow down the fermentation process, and I can just get back to it in the morning. Now, if you do have time, you can let them bulk rise at room temperature. Then you can form your loaves and put them in the fridge. It all depends on your schedule. You're working the sourdough into your schedule, which is why I created these checklist sourdough guides above, which will help you no matter what schedule you have. I've got a guide for a nine to five schedule, someone who's freelance, someone who likes to stay up late at night. Click the link if you want the perfect guide for your schedule. So my dough is fermented overnight, and I take it out in the morning, and you can see some of those fermentation bubbles. It's gained a little bit of volume. It's looking really nice. It smells good. It smells like fermented dough. We are ready to shape our loaves, which brings us into tip number nine, which is finding that perfect balance between the stickiness and the dryness of your dough. How much flour do you use? I see a lot of people at this point, they get super overwhelmed by the wetness, the stickiness of their dough, and they start adding all of this flour, but you need some stickiness in your dough to actually form your loaves to shape them correctly, but you can't have it too sticky or it's just gonna stick everywhere. So this will definitely take time to develop. It's one of the trickier parts of making sourdough bread at home, but you'll get that feel over time. And remember, this bench scraper right here, this thing is your friend. Think of it as like a nonstick hand because the dough, the sticky dough, won't stick to the bench scraper, but it will certainly stick to your hand. So take advantage of this thing. So I divided my dough into two pieces and I'm giving them a rough shaping right here. And this shaping doesn't matter so much. It's just giving them that loose form before we really refine it and give it the final shaping. And just let those sit on a little bit of flour on the board and cover those. And we're gonna let those bench rest for 30 minutes before we move on to the final shaping. So these right here are your bannetons or your proofing baskets, where your dough sits in to hold its form and to proof. But tip number 10 is just remembering to generously flour these bannetons. Because remember, you're dealing with a really wet dough and if you don't generously flour these things, then you could have dough sticking to the side. And when you've gone through the whole process, you're ready to bake and your dough sticks to the proofing basket, not fun. And you can always just brush off your excess flour later. So our dough has bench rest for 30 minutes and we are ready to shape our loaves, get our final shaping in there. And tip number 11 is there's no perfect way to shape your dough. There's so many different techniques out there and you really just gotta get in there and try. You can find a million techniques on Instagram. I've been in bakeries. I've seen so many different styles of shaping your dough, but you're really trying to just accomplish a few key things. What I like to do is just add a little bit of flour to the surface of the dough and to the board. And then I'll flatten out the dough just a little bit, stretch it out so you've got some surface area to work with. Then I grab the two closest corners and just start folding them over. And this is why you don't want too much flour because if there's too much flour, these corners won't stick together. Now, once it's folded together, you're gonna start folding it in on itself. And really you're trying to build some surface tension here by folding the dough in on itself, but you don't wanna deflate the dough at this point. You've worked so hard to build all of that nice air in your dough. And just keep doing that and make sure you fold in the seams and let that sit on your board for just a few seconds so that seam on the bottom completely seals. And then what I like to do is just roll that in some sesame seeds because sesame sourdough is just unbeatable. And once it's in the sesame seeds, you can just pop that right into your banneton. You also wanna make sure that once it's in the banneton that you go around the sides and flour the sides because your dough is gonna be proofing in there. And if it proofs to the sides and they're not floured, that's an easy way for the dough to stick to the sides. Now our dough has to proof in the baskets. And if you didn't put it in the fridge already for the bulk rise, you could pop it in the fridge now if it's late at night and let them proof overnight, or you can just do it at room temperature for around two to three hours. And that brings us into tip 12. How do you know when your dough is ready to go in the oven? Well, you're gonna use something called a poke test, and it's really simple. You give your dough a little poke, and if it springs completely back to the surface and doesn't leave a dent, well, you gotta let it proof for a little longer. If you poke it and it just leaves a big dent and it doesn't spring back at all, it's probably overproofed. The perfect place you're looking for is when you poke it and it springs back just a little bit and still leaves a slight dent. That's when you know your dough is perfectly proofed and ready to go in the oven. So ideally, you have one of these Dutch oven type things that you can throw in your oven. That's gonna imitate an actual steam oven because when the dough rises, it gives off steam and it gets trapped in that Dutch oven, which will help the rise, it will help the color. So get your Dutch oven preheated at 500 or 550 degrees for at least 30 minutes, ideally an hour, and we're ready to bake our loaves. The oven spring, the most exciting part about making sourdough, you never know how it's gonna turn out until, whoo, that's nice. You can see we've got a nice ear right here, but the crust is super light. That's why we take the lid off and now we slide this baby back to caramelize the crust and finish it off. And one more tip, you can take a tray like this, pop this on here. A lot of people have issues with their crust burning on the bottom. That's a great tip. You slide that under, that will help the burning of the crust. So I've lowered the temperature of the oven and you can see here, we've got a nice caramelized, darkish brown color crust. It's beautiful. And a lot of people, they don't cook their bread long enough and I think this is where you can develop a lot of flavor. So rather than going off the actual time, everyone's oven is different, go off the color. This looks beautiful, so it's ready to go, but I've got a bonus tip for you. We're just gonna throw this in and turn off the oven. This is a step I learned in a bakery where if you put it back in with the oven off and just crack the lid, this is a curing process so the bread continues to dry out and you get a seriously intense crust on your bread. It's gonna be so crackly and so delicious and let that sit in there for 20 minutes, but make sure this is cracked right here. So I've taken you through the process of baking sourdough at home and tip number 15 is don't be ashamed to screw up or fail. It really is part of the sourdough journey because there are so many variables when it comes to baking bread at home. When you're dealing with a natural fermentation, you really never know and this is a loaf I baked today and to be honest, it's good, but it didn't come out perfect. Even me, I've been baking for years and I screw up, although that crumb does look pretty nice. I highly suggest not cutting into your bread when it's super warm because it will affect the texture, but sometimes it's just irresistible. So I'm just gonna give this a taste. Just look at that, 50% whole wheat sesame crusted sourdough. It's a beautiful thing right there. There is nothing better. This is so sustaining, this bread. Sometimes I bake a loaf of sourdough and it's just my lunch or my dinner. You don't need too much more other than maybe some olive oil or some butter. It's hard to explain how good this is and how much better this is than the loaves you get in bakeries. Never in a million years did I think you can make artisanal style sourdough bread at home, but it is possible and you can do it as well. It's just a road to success. So stay patient, stay in the game, and you'll be having delicious bread. And remember, you can download those free guides to making sourdough right above. Just click that link that will help you fit in sourdough to your own schedule and make sure you follow me at lifebymikeg on Instagram to get all the behind the scenes action in this studio and all of the fermentation projects I'm working on. So until next time, get cooking.