Bake With Me | Sourdough Bread!

Hello friends! Today's the day that we are going to bake a sourdough loaf together. I am so beyond excited. This has absolutely been something that I've really enjoyed the past four or five-ish months and I was a little hesitant to make this video because I still feel like quite a baking novice especially when it comes to sourdough and I'm still making mistakes. I'm still learning and growing in my experience and wisdom and a lot of the science behind it still doesn't fully make sense to me but I didn't want those insecurities to hold us back. I wanted to show you all of the wisdom I've collected so far and the loaves that we have been making are so so delicious so I want to be able to share this with you and my sweet friend Alyssa who I love so much, she actually really helped me with my sourdough journey and taught me a lot of what I know so I really want to be that friend to you and share little tidbits along the way and what has really helped me kind of get in the routine because it is a process, okay? Making sourdough bread definitely is a process, you have to plan ahead but once you get in a schedule and get in a groove it becomes a lot easier and it's so so worth it because the finished product is absolutely divine so I'm really excited and I want to start out by sharing of course a key component of beautiful sourdough and that is the sourdough starter. So essentially the sourdough starter is active and alive yeast and good bacteria. Mine's actually hanging out on the floating shelf back here, this is where I typically keep it. So this is how ours is looking, it is very active, very bubbly and it is not even close to being ready to be fed. I feed it at 9 p.m and it's currently around 3 45 so it's a very happy starter and for me I feel like that has been the biggest game changer is having a starter that is incredibly active and sour so you get that beautiful sourdough flavor. So I just want to share a little background about this starter. So my friend Alyssa who taught me all that I know pretty much, she gave me a discard of her starter and that really helped me because I first tried to bake sourdough in March 2020 as many of us did when it became a trending hobby and activity and it really was so mediocre and I actually made my own sourdough starter and you can make this just with flour and water and you just have to be patient and let it ferment. So I think it was okay but the thing is the older, it's like aged cheese, I believe that the older and more mature and complex the sourdough starter is the more flavor you'll have in your bread. That's just what I've experienced. So if you are looking for a sourdough starter one you can either make it on your own which is a very rewarding thing to kind of it's like growing a plant from seed so that is very rewarding if you choose to do it that way or you can reach out to your local community see if there's anybody that you know that already bakes sourdough and ask them for some of their sourdough discard. Another thing you can do is if you don't know anyone currently who bakes sourdough you could also check out Facebook groups maybe type out where you live and then sourdough and see if any Facebook groups come out and then you'll probably find like a community of people who love to bake and would be happy to share their discard or you can buy it online. So Etsy sells it. I don't know if Amazon sells it. I wouldn't be surprised but maybe and lots of like little small shops but on Etsy I've actually I was tempted to buy some discard it was like 400 year old French sourdough loaf discard. They have some fancy fancy discards that you can purchase so that's pretty cool but I'm super thankful for this happy one and again that is where you need to start because that's a key component and we personally keep our sourdough I mean our sourdough starter in the refrigerator and we only feed it when we're ready to bake getting ready to bake. So last night and this morning I fed it and it's after two feedings it's active enough to start baking so how you know it's active enough you can smell it and see all the bubbles and if it's growing in size as it's sitting between feedings that's always a good sign and another thing you can do is a float test. You have a cup of water or a bowl of water and then you add some of the discard on top of it and if it floats that is a very good sign. It's not a bulletproof test but it's a very good sign. So those are some backgrounds and knowledge tidbits about the sourdough starter and I'll go ahead and link a lot of resources and other videos a tutorial of how to make your own sourdough starter and just more background behind it if you are finding it interesting so you can check that out and then this is sort of my schedule so I've tried a few different recipes and actually this past weekend I tried a recipe that only took about 12 hours in total not active work but just from start to finish with resting time and all of that but this specific recipe it does take a couple of days which may sound so daunting but again once you get in the routine it's really not so bad and a lot of the time isn't active work you're just waiting for it to rise and be ready and activate so I'll take you through it but today is Thursday and we will have our beautiful sourdough loaves by Saturday morning so that's sort of the plan and tomorrow is when we do the most work where we're going to need to make our dough let it sit and shape our loaves and then after that we just put it in the fridge for about 12 hours and then bake so that's the rundown and I'm going to go ahead and link the faster recipes because if you'd like a more quick and simple recipe you'll have that as a starting point but again I this has just been the best formula for me and our sourdough that just makes it that much more delicious and fluffy and you have that beautiful flavor and tonight we're going to make our levain which I feel like is a really key component to that delicious delicious sourdough flavor that really enhances that flavor so that's the rundown again I want to set you up for success and not make it seem too daunting because it really is so rewarding and I'm also going to show you how I add in flavors to the sourdough so I'm going to do a rosemary garlic loaf I'm going to do one plain and then one rosemary garlic and that's another thing I love about this recipe is that it produces two loaves which actually I think I'm going to make three loaves and just make smaller loaves this go around so it's great so if you want to keep one for yourself you can totally do that or gift it to a loved one and then if you want to do different flavors you have that flexibility so I really love this recipe and I hope you do as well so I'm going to let this starter have a bit more time and then I'll see you later tonight when we make our levain hello good evening I'm back again in my pjs now because I'm getting ready for bed but first we need to make our levain so we can prep our dough in the morning so for this you'll need your sourdough starter all bubbly and active and then you'll need another jar where you can make your levain and again the levain really helps create a more intense sourdough flavor because we're gonna take 27 grams of the sourdough starter and then add in 135 grams of bread flour and water so we'll let this sit overnight and then we'll use that to bake our dough and we'll have a good amount to work with so that's sort of the gist about it so I'm going to make the levain and again I'll put the measurements in the description in case you do want to follow this recipe and then I'm also going to feed my sourdough starter and then put it into the fridge and let it hang out into the fridge until next time I bake bread and if there ever is a time where I don't bake bread once a week I'll just make sure I feed my starter once a week but then it can continue to hang out in the fridge and basically the cooler temperatures it just slows down the whole process so it just helps it kind of stay fresh that's as far as I know about it at least so that's the plan and my ratios for feeding my sourdough starter I do 20 I do 20 grams of the starter and then 40 grams of bread flour and 40 grams of water and I do filtered water from the refrigerator some people get this fancy bottled water but the refrigerator water has worked fine for us so that's the plan let's get to it it's good in general when you keep your levain or starter out to keep it away from any vent and a big factor is temperature so if it is really warm or really cold in your house it can affect the starter and just the active yeast so that's something to consider but I feel like now that we're approaching the warmer months it's a really great time to start baking so you can kind of get your footing and get a feel for it because at least in my experience I do find it easier to have successful starter and everything when it is warmer because it prefers a more mild and warm-ish climate so something that I'm going to do that I like to do every so often is mark where our levain is at night and then in the morning we can see how much it grew this is fun to do with your starter as well so I do have quite a bit coming up on the sides but just for a general idea we see like the bulk of it is starting right around here so we have a little dry erase marker and we'll see how much it grows but I'll see you in the morning good morning the time has come our levain is ready it's time to make our dough so yesterday I was saying levain but the French proper way to say it is levain and it is absolutely popping off I'm so excited about it okay so we made our little indicator last night and look at how much it's grown it is bubbly smells amazing and it's just happy as can be so that's such a good time such a good sign so I'm gonna take my okay so you can take a big bowl or like a big mixing bowl I think the KitchenAid stainless steel bowl would work really well or you could take a bucket like this which I will say this is handy because it rises quite vertically and you can really see how your dough is changing throughout the day so this is great but you can use what you have absolutely and I'm going to take 560 grams of water which ideally you want warm water around 80 degrees Fahrenheit I'm going to pour the water in my bucket add all my levain and then add in 900 grams of flour and we are going to mix and mix and mix until there are no dry bits you really can't over mix your dough so I like to just mix with my hand and I'll show you the whole process but that's what we're going to do and this morning the process is going to take about two hours but not active not active working so we're gonna do some stretch and folds and then let it rest so you can do other things around the house but you will need to be home for this portion for two hours a little over two hours if I'm being real especially the first time you start doing this just just block off three hours so you can give yourself plenty of time to take your time and do all the things you need to do to get it right so let's go for it but good morning I'm excited we're one step closer since I get our filtered water from the refrigerator it comes out quite cold so I'll just put it over the burner for a couple minutes on low so that it can warm up and then I'll add it into my bucket I have my scale on so I know how many grams I'm pouring in and again we want 560 I feel like I said 570 but we want 560 grams of filtered water 35 grams short so let's add some more and I'm going to need some more water for a sea salt water mixture so I'll just start heating some more up my warm water and I went ahead and took off all my rings because we'll be mixing with our hands I just find that to be the easiest but you could also use a spatula but you really want to I think it's helpful to be able to feel the dough because you really want to make sure that the there's no dry bits of flour okay now I'm pulling out my scale again and we are going to measure out 900 grams of bread flour and I have baked with all-purpose flour before so if you only have all-purpose flour or prefer that I will link the recipe I followed for that because there are quite a few adjustments so you can definitely do that but bread flour the difference is that it has a higher protein count so it really is just the preferred flour and consistency for the sourdough loaves so that's my knowledge of it but there are recipes for many different types of flours so again you can play around and see what works best but the bread flour has worked out really well for us and that's what I use to feed our starter as well I actually had to run to the grocery store this morning because I realized I did not have enough bread flour which has happened multiple times so try to be more prepared than I am and stock up if you plan to bake quite often there we are 900 grams beautiful beautiful okay so now I'm going to take it off the scale roll up my sleeves and mix it all together this could take five ten minutes really just depends but again you want to make sure it's all mixed up and incorporated here's what our dough is looking like all mixed up it is rather tough and sticky but it will change as we go along so now we're gonna let it rest you can let it rest for 30 minutes or up to an hour and since I have more flexibility today I am going to let it rest for an hour so I'm just gonna cover it with a damp cloth that's what I typically do but you could use plastic wrap that'll work fine so we have that we'll set our timer I'll do it on my phone if I'm moving around a lot but I anticipate staying in this general area so we'll put 60 minutes on the clock so while our dough is doing its thing let's go ahead and mix our salt mixture that we'll add in during our first turn so you're gonna take 20 grams of water or filtered water and then I like to do 27 grams of this coarse kosher salt but you can use any kind of sea salt and I'll just measure it all out mix it up and then we'll incorporate it into the dough once our timer goes off that's our cue it's time to do our first stretch and fold okay so here's how our dough is looking still a bit scruffy a little disheveled but it'll really start to come together and form and just a little background around the stretch and folds the folds strengthen the gluten and gently incorporate air into the dough while creating volume so we are going to do four folds in total and I've been done different recipes in the past where there's only one or two folds or three folds but having four of the folds again it's just going to help us really create that bouncy and voluptuous volume that is just so pleasant for a sourdough loaf so I'm also going to incorporate our salt and water mixture so I like to do a little bit at a time as I'm folding so I have it there and then oh an important step is to wet your hand so I'm going to run it under the sink real quick so that just helps the dough not stick to your hand as much and then I'm going to cup my hand I'm going to try to reach the bottom of my bucket and then I'm going to pull the dough as far as I can like this without it breaking and I'm going to fold it over itself and then tuck it in to the other side and I'm going to continue doing that until we reach a full circle all righty there we have it that's kind of the final look of what mine looks like for the after the first fold and then I'm just going to cover it again with my damp cloth and let it sit for 30 minutes and then we're going to repeat that step minus the sea salt okay we finished our fourth turn and now it's time for bulk fermentation so we're just gonna let it sit on the countertop for five to eight hours I know that's a really long range but I'll probably let it sit for eight-ish hours because I have plans later this evening so I'll be gone when the six-hour mark hits it's about noon now so it doesn't you don't need to stress out about it don't need to be super specific about the time but essentially your dough is ready to shape when it doubles about 30 to 50 percent so I'm going to use my dry erase marker again and we're going to just mark about where the dough is right now and then we'll get to see how much it rises so that's always fun and we're getting closer closer and closer with each step and during this I'm also going to prep while this is just sitting out I'm also going to prep my garlic and rosemary for adding that flavor to one of our loaves so we're planning ahead but again we're getting closer okay update a little change of plans it's only been about three hours but look at how much it's already risen it's like about to pop out of this bucket soon here I mean it is a happy camper and I mentioned that I have plans tonight and I'm leaving home around like 5 45 6 ish so I think we should go ahead and shape our dough before we leave instead of later and I just wanted to like talk this out because when I first started baking sourdough I was so regiment about the schedule and like I let it control my day but now I I control the sourdough's day instead I don't let it like alter my plans or anything so I just want to like say that as a caveat because it is important there is a lot of emphasis put on timing and schedule when it comes to baking but I like to leave and I like to just go more with the flow and let it happen how it's going to happen and again now that it's warming up the process is sped up so much like it is about 75 degrees in our home right now so that is really speeding up the process I'm also currently baking a quiche so the oven's on so that's like adding a warmer atmosphere so again lots of factors but we're gonna let the dough control our day we're just gonna go with the flow so with all that being said I'm gonna give it like another hour or two but I want to prepare our roasted garlic and rosemary for that loaf so that we have that all ready to go because we'll be adding that in as we shape and do our final dough structure so that's the plan let's go out to the garden get some rosemary and roast our garlic in the air fryer I mean look at this beauty it is so voluptuous it's definitely double in size voluptuous is absolutely one of my favorite words to describe bread I just think it fits right I mean look at those bubbles it is definitely ready so I'm gonna transport it over to this wooden cutting board I have and I'm gonna sprinkle this lightly and some lightly with flour I like to use this little sifter because it helps me sprinkle more evenly so I'm gonna do that and then we are going to cut it into three loaves because like I mentioned I want to do three loaves instead of two loaves but you can absolutely do whatever you fancy and I'm gonna add I'm gonna start to shape it which I'll show you and then one of the loaves I'll add my roasted garlic and rosemary it's so jiggly and I'm gonna do one smaller loaf like kind of a mini loaf and then we'll do two sort of medium sized loaves okay and I'm gonna flip them over but first we're gonna sprinkle them with some flour to make it a little less sticky I feel like my loaves tend to be quite moist and a little more on the sticky side I don't know if it's because of the Florida humidity or my ratios and measurements I'm not quite sure but I am not too frugal with the flour because we have a great bit of moisture already let me go ahead and shape the miniature one first because I feel like that'll be easiest to show you so we're gonna try to form it into a ball and I feel like this is I will say shaping it is probably what I'm the worst at so take everything I say with a grain of salt but I'll show you how I do it okay I'm actually gonna flip it over again because I like this side better for the bottom and you're kind of stretching and folding again but essentially you're just folding it into itself to create a bit of a ball I need to flour my hands a little bit sticky I like to keep my flour just open and closed so that I can reach for it whenever I need it okay and this is just the first little shaping and we're gonna do a final shape in 15 minutes so we're just gonna leave it like that just get the beginning stages going we'll leave it as it is and then this one we'll do the rosemary garlic okay so I have it here ready to go and I'm going to oh yeah sticky sticky sticky I'm going to stretch it stretch one side and then transport some of the rosemary garlic and it doesn't need to be precise it'll kind of work itself out as we continue to shape it and then I fold it over itself and then I'm gonna stretch out this side a bit take a handful and I'll kind of like press it down a bit so that it sticks to the dough more and then fold it in on itself and then we're gonna do that again on this side and you just do that until you run out of your filling your flavor filling so sometimes I make too much sometimes I could make more but again you don't have to be too precise you'll refine you'll refine the art of making your loafs as you go at least that's how I like to think about it I don't like to be too much of a perfectionist because I feel like it'll just evolve as time goes okay I moved us over to the island because we'll need a bit more space because we're gonna be doing this directly on the countertop because you need some tension so I'm gonna super lightly dust the countertop with flour and then you also need to prepare your bowls so this is where your loaves are gonna live for the next 12 to 24 hours you can let them proof in the fridge for quite some time one or two days is what I'm aware of so we're gonna bake in the morning so we'll let ours prove for about 18 hours and you need to dust the bowls if you add a towel like this you need to dust it with flour so that it doesn't stick to the towel and same with your banneton if you decide to go with a banneton but a bowl works perfectly fine I do this every single week I do have bannetons so I also use them but sometimes my bowls work even better just with the shape of them so it really depends but again use what you have especially when starting out you don't need to buy all these fancy tools and equipment you really can be resourceful so let's do it we're gonna transport our loaves to our lightly floured floured countertop and then go from there okay let's shape our little miniature dough first so I'm transporting it over to the countertop with my bench knife and I'm going to flip it over so that the seam side is up and I'm going to do the same thing where we just fold it in on itself and we're creating a seam at the bottom and once we put it into our bowl or banneton that seam side is going to be up because then we'll flip it over into the dutch oven tomorrow morning okay and then I flipped it over once I created that seam again and now I'm going to cup the loaf and try to add some tension so I have a little bit too much flour here but you need some tension with your countertop and you're going to drag it like an inch at a time to create that more round shape and you're going to twist as you turn it so I'm going to move the camera soon to give you a better angle but hopefully you can kind of visually see how I'm working it place it into the bowl seam side up which my seams never look that great but typically it turns out beautiful anyways shape it like you'll watch professionals do this and it's a lot less messier and definitely more refined but I'm still relatively new to this but it works out so you don't always have to be super fancy okay so where are my hands transporting it over cupping the bottom sliding it over to create that beautiful beautiful shape and here they are little cuties so now we're going to cold proof and I have these plastic bags that I put them in that my friend list gave to me and they're they're pretty helpful because you can just slide the loaves into the plastic bags I actually just have two of them though so I'll need to figure something out for or maybe I can fit two in one bag I don't know we'll see but you could also just cover it with plastic wrap or be resourceful this part is finding enough room in your fridge to fit your loaves we did it see you in the morning good morning I just woke up and it's a very exciting morning because it is baking day it is time almost to enjoy our bread and turn our home into a bakery the smell once it's in the oven is phenomenal so cheers to that I hope you all are excited so I've already sort of started I turned our oven on I'm preheating it to 500 degrees which I know sounds intense we're actually going to lower the temperature to 450 degrees once we start baking but you really want it to be warm and nice and toasty in there and I also have my dutch oven in the oven so that it's nice and hot and can be ready to carry the bread so make sure you have those oven mitts handy and now I'm going to take my first dough out of the fridge and transfer it over to parchment paper and score which is always like the fun artistic part and I'll show you a couple of my favorite scoring methods so let's go ahead and do that I always have a hard time with these boxes cutting the paper with these boxes so I always opt for scissors and then I like to crunch the parchment paper up so that it's more moldable we've got a palmer right at our feet gently flip it out of your banneton or your bowl beautiful beautiful this is my rosemary garlic one okay and now I'm gonna take a little bit of flour you can use rice flour or bread flour whatever flour really and I'm going to dust my loaf okay then I'm gonna take a razor blade or a sharp knife I have this razor blade that I got off of Amazon then I'm gonna do like a half moon shape for this one so I do a pretty deep cut and then I'll do some of these cute little leaf designs that's what I think of them as just these little dashes and sort of go in the shape of my original half moon design one of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram is called cottage loaves and she is truly a sour dough professional and she does the most intricate and amazing themed designs so I'll put her profile for some inspo but I definitely don't get that fancy but I still like to have fun with it okay I just pulled my dutch oven out of the oven make sure again you have your oven mitts this thing is hot so I'm gonna take off the lid and gently transfer my loaf into the dutch oven then I'm gonna top it with the lid again and then pop it in the oven and set a timer for 20 minutes and then once the 20 minutes is up we are going to remove the lid from the dutch oven and let it bake for about 10-15 more minutes oh my goodness I'm giddy look at this absolute beauty wow wow wow wow wow so this is looking delicious and the rosemary garlic smells too too good so excited okay so I took the lid off and I'm gonna put it back in the oven and I'm gonna set a timer for 15 minutes and then check on it um after that and maybe we'll add a little bit more time it really depends on your preference too with how crusty you like it to be um so of course if you want more of that brown toasted look you'll leave it in a bit longer so we'll see how we feel after 15 minutes look at this absolute beauty this is it after 15 minutes and we are good to go so now I'm just gonna repeat all those steps for our other two loaves someone's excited how cute they are I did a different scoring design for each so we have a cute little variety I love our mini loaf it's so adorable and you may be thinking yay it's finally time to cut into them and eat but not so fast it's actually recommended to wait a few hours after you bake because technically the bread is still cooking as it cools and the steam trapped inside the bread will actually start to move outwards to the crust so if you cut it too early this will stop that process so you have to have some self-control which is really hard when it smells so delicious but we'll get there soon so I'm just gonna let this cool for a couple hours we'll see maybe a few hours if I can wait that long and then we'll finally cut into it and enjoy time has come we're gonna cut these loaves and do a taste test let's cut the rosemary garlic one first the bottom is always pretty tricky to cut because it's more crusty so I'll just put it on its side or sometimes even cut it top down so that it's easier to handle oh my goodness look at that beauty nice and airy light smells so good okay taste test this is the plain loaf piece of the plain loaf still a little warm even after a few hours it still has a bit of warmth to it so good thank you all so much for watching this bake with me I really hope you enjoyed it and found it helpful I know it can seem like a lot and a little bit daunting that's how I felt when I first started baking but I really hope this was helpful and of course I'll link all of the supplies resources materials etc to hopefully give you the confidence to start your baking journey but thank you so much again for watching and I cannot wait to see you next happy baking bye bye bye boomer bye my baking buddy