The Easiest Actually Good Sourdough Bread (No Mixer)

Hey, what's up? If you're new here, my name is Brian Lagerstrom. And before I was in your phone or in your TV making food videos, I was actually a restaurant chef and a professional bread baker. And today I'm gonna use that experience to show you guys the easiest possible loaf of sourdough bread you can make at home. In this video, you'll learn exactly how to handle a sourdough starter, how to mix the bread dough without a stand mixer, then how to bake that dough with and without bread specific tools. If you've been wanting to dabble in the world of sourdough but you just didn't know where to start, then this is the vid for you. Before we get started on the mix though, I really quick wanna go over the six fundamental steps of sourdough baking so that you guys can more closely follow along. Step one is the leaven build stage. This is where we take our sourdough starter and turn it into the leaven that's gonna ferment the dough and produce the gas necessary for a loaf of bread. By the way, leaven and sourdough starter are not the same thing. And I'll explain exactly how they're different in just a second. Step two is the mix stage. That's where we take our ripe leaven and combine it with flour, water, and salt to build the final dough. Step three is the bulk stage, also known as bulk fermentation. During this step, we let the sourdough cultures in the leaven digest the starches in the flour to produce acidity and CO2. This is also the part of the process where the majority of the gluten development happens, so it's important. Step four is the shape stage. That's where we take the blob of dough that we just fermented and fold it in a very deliberate way to actually build it into a loaf. And then step five is the proof stage. During proofing, we let the shaped dough capture more gas and develop more acidity. And then step six is the bake stage, which seems pretty straightforward, and it is, but there's a few factors that we need to pay attention to that wouldn't be obvious to the beginner baker. And that's it. There's only six steps in this entire process. Now, each step has its own complexity, which I'll explain as we go, but by the end of this video, you should feel more than confident in making your own loaf of sourdough at home. Step one is to build the leaven. So 12 hours before you wanna mix your dough, combine 100 grams of water, that's about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with 25 grams of ripe sourdough starter. And when I say ripe, I mean starter that was fed about 10 to 12 hours previously. So if I'm mixing this leaven at 8 p.m. Friday for Saturday morning's mix, that means that I need to feed my sourdough starter at 8 a.m. Friday morning. Finally, I'll just top the water and starter with 100 grams of bread flour, then mix until everything is well combined and there aren't any more lumps. From here, I'm gonna pop on a lid and ferment this leaven at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours. Right about now, you're probably wondering, hey, Bri, what is even the difference between a sourdough starter and a leaven? Well, a sourdough starter is just captured wild yeast and bacteria. You don't bake bread directly with a sourdough starter. On the other hand, a leaven is a very specific amount of flour, water, and sourdough starter that you use to produce the gas and acidity necessary to turn a dough into a loaf of bread. A sourdough starter is something that you feed and keep alive forever, whereas a leaven is made with sourdough starter and you feed it once and use all of it in the loaf. By the way, when you're baking often and you wanna keep your sourdough starter alive and vigorous, I would say feed it two times a day, once in the morning and once at night. To feed your starter, discard all but one spoonful, or about 50 grams worth, then add in 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour and just stir to combine. When you're not baking that often and you just wanna keep this starter alive, I would say feed it once every seven days and then just keep it in the fridge. When you wanna make some sourdough, just pull the starter out of the fridge two days before baking and bring it back to life with two feedings, then jump into the leaven step that we did just a second ago. 12 hours after mixing, you can see this leaven is very ripe. It's three or four X in size and it's frothy, bubbly, and alive. Plus it smells sweet, sour, and wild, almost like a sour beer. A quick way to test that the leaven is ready to bake with is to drop a little bit into some water. If it floats, it's ready to rip. If it sinks, that means you probably need to check the vigor of your sourdough starter. Then to make this dough, I'll grab a medium mixing bowl and drop in 275 grams of 92F water. This will ensure a warm dough temperature between 78 and 82F. Next, I'll scoop in all of my ripe leaven. Then I'll just stir that into the water real quick until it's kind of dissolved. Mixing already hydrated flour with fresh, dry flour is kind of a pain in the butt and this helps. Next, in goes 400 grams of bread flour, then 50 grams of whole wheat flour, and 12 grams of salt. To mix it, I'll grab a sturdy spoon, then jump into the bowl and stir until the flour, water, and starter come together into a dry clump. I wanna give this about two minutes of spoon mixing so that the flour can hydrate a little bit more. And once I can't mix this anymore, I'm gonna switch over to the trusty soaking wet hand. Then I'll jump back in and finish mixing the dough by squeezing and folding it with my hand until everything is more or less homogenous. The goal here is mainly to work out any clumps or dry spots. Of course, if you've got a stand mixer and you don't wanna use your precious elbow grease hand mixing this, go ahead and use that instead. Just combine everything in the bowl and mix on medium speed for about five to seven minutes until you've got a well combined blob. From this point, you'll follow the process exactly the same as for the hand mix. Back at the hand mix version, you can see that I've got it squeezed into a homogenous mass and that's all I need. From here, I'm gonna cover the dough and check back in 30 minutes. While I take a quick lunch break and thank CookUnity for sponsoring this video. CookUnity is a great way to get freshly prepared restaurant quality food from award winning chefs delivered directly to your door. Since I know I'm gonna be eating almost a whole loaf of sourdough later, I want something light for lunch. So today I'm gonna go for the pesto chicken breast from Chef Ruben Garcia. The best way to heat this thing up is in the oven for about 12 minutes, but you can also microwave it too if you're in a hurry. I've tried a ton of CookUnity meals at this point and they do a surprisingly excellent job at delivering a meal that tastes like it was prepared by a chef. My favorite so far has been this Pappardelle Pork Ragu by Chef John Delucci of New York's Waverly Inn. It's rich and comforting and I wanna eat all of it, basically. If you're short on time and you like good tasting food, this is a great option. Check it out. So to stock your fridge with CookUnity, head to cookunity.com slash BrianL50 or click the link in my description and use code BrianL50 to get 50% off your first order of CookUnity meals. Thank you, CookUnity. 30 minutes later, this dough is still a wet, shaggy mess. So we'll need to develop some of the gluten. To do that, I'll grab a grip of the dough, pull it out until I meet resistance, then I'll fold it back over itself. I'll repeat that five to six more times until I can't pull and fold anymore. Then I'll flip this dough over and give it a 10 o'clock to three o'clock rounding maneuver to tuck the dough under itself and create even more strength and tension. This is actually super close to how we would develop the gluten in a professional bread bakery. Instead of relying on a stand mixer to do 100% of the gluten development, we're actually layering the gluten or folding it to develop it. This is just a much gentler way to develop gluten and in my opinion, it's more effective. So you don't really need a stand mixer. And once this dough has been folded and rounded into a tidy, tight little ball, I'm gonna cover it again and check back in 30 more minutes. 30 minutes later or 60 minutes after we mix this dough, I'm gonna repeat this folding one more time, exactly the same as before. Now I'm gonna cover it one more time and move it to a warm place to finish its bulk fermentation for two more hours, making the bulk three hours in total. By the way, my warm place is just my oven, which I turned on for about five minutes, then turned off. So now it's sitting around 95F. Now, while this dough finishes bulk fermenting in a warm place, I wanna call out one of the most common mistakes that most sourdough bread bakers make, which is dough temperature. If your dough is below about 76F, it's just not gonna ferment properly. It's gonna take all day and you're gonna be constantly checking it and being like, what's going on? Your dough's too cold. So there's two main ways to mitigate this. One is use warm water up front like we did. I would recommend at least 92F if you wanna end up with a dough temperature between 76 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. And the number two is make sure you're fermenting the dough in the proper environment. In a warm place like we just did in the oven is a great way to ensure that it keeps moving. Or if you're not gonna be throwing it into an oven, at the very least, make sure that it's in a warm room and not on a stone countertop. Stone countertops act as kind of a heat sink and they suck all of the heat energy out of the dough through the bottom of the bowl. So I like to ferment my dough on a wood cutting board so that all the heat energy stays in the dough and it ferments nice and fast. Two hours later, when I pull my dough out of the oven, you can see that it's just about doubled in size and it's looking nice and gassy. From here, I'm gonna move into the shape phase. For that, I'll flip my dough out onto a lightly floured cutting board. Then I'm gonna give it the simplest possible shape. For that, I'll grab opposite sides of the dough, pull out, and fold them over each other. Then I'll rotate a bit, pull out two more sides, and fold those over. Next, I'll flip it over onto the folds and then round it while stretching the top down and under the bottom to create just a little bit more tension. This shape of bread is called a boule, B-O-U-L-E, and it's by far the easiest shape that you can make at home. Next, I'll grab a linen-lined bread proofing basket and sprinkle the inside with a moderate amount of flour to keep the loaf from sticking. By the way, if you're even a little bit bread curious and you plan to bake more than a couple of times per year, definitely get some proofing baskets. You can get a set of two on Amazon for like 25 bucks. And if you're interested, I'll link to these ones in the description. Next, I'll drop my shaped boule into the floured basket, seam side up. Then I'll come back and get the backside a few more crisscross folds to pull the glutens in the loaf into just a little bit more tension. If you don't have or aren't gonna buy a bread proofing basket, use a nine to 10 inch wide bowl and drop in a less absorbent fabric like canvas, linen, or a tea towel, then dust with flour and drop in your loaf. Next, I'll cover up the backside of my loaf, then scoot it back over to a warm place to proof up for 60 to 90 minutes. After about 60 to 70 minutes of proofing, when I pull this loaf out of the oven, you can see it's about 60 to 70% larger and it's filling out the basket nicely. To test if it's ready to bake, I'll poke it gently. If the loaf bounces back slowly, like the Pillsbury Doughboy, it's perfectly proofed. If the indent stays indented, that means that your loaf is probably overproofed. And that's fine, it just means that it won't rise as high in the oven. Just give it less time next time. Now, the most low tech and simple process for baking this is to flip the loaf out onto a parchmented sheet tray, then grab scissors and score the top with five to six deliberate overlapping snips. These cuts create a weak spot that allows the bread to spring much, much higher in the oven. Next, I'll grab a squirter of water and spritz this loaf about 10 times to create some extra steam during the bake. Then I'll cover with a turkey foil pan lid and load into a preheated 450F oven and bake covered for 15 minutes. By the way, this lid is essential for this process because it traps steam around the outside of the loaf. Steam is important for good bread for two main reasons. Number one is that it delays crust formation so it allows the loaf to rise a lot higher. And then number two, it changes the way the outside of the crust gelatinizes so we get a more dynamic, crunchier and more golden brown crust. 15 minutes later, when I come back and remove the lid, you can see that we got an epic oven spring and we've got a really beautiful, craggy opening up top. From here, I'm gonna bake this loaf uncovered for 20 more minutes, but I'm gonna scoot it onto a wire rack to keep the bottom from burning. And after 30-ish minutes of bake time when I pull this out, you can see that this loaf looks craggy, crusty, and nicely golden brown. But there is a second method for baking that's just as easy as this one and provides a much better crust experience. To do it, I'll pull a Dutch oven that I preheated at 475F for 30 minutes out of the oven, then hit a nine-inch round of parchment paper with some semolina flour. Then I'll carefully flip my proofed loaf onto that parchment. Then I'll grab my scissors one more time and snip this loaf five to six times on an angle. Then I'm gonna lift this parchment carefully and drop it into the heated Dutch oven. Then I'll pop on the preheated lid, then drop the whole thing into the oven and bake covered for 15 minutes. By the way, I greatly prefer the Dutch oven method here over the sheet tray foil pan because Dutch ovens have a lot more thermal mass. What does that mean? Well, the cast iron holds onto a lot more heat and it transfers that into the dough a lot more efficiently. Aesthetically, that means that we get a thicker, more set, crispier crust, and a more dynamic golden brown exterior. And after 15 minutes, I'm gonna snatch this Dutchie out of the oven, pop off the lid, and release the steam. Wow, as you can see, this loaf ripped itself open in the oven. Okay, the Dutch goes back into my 475F oven and I'll bake it for another 25 more minutes. And after about a 35-minute bake, it's time to pull this loaf and take a look. As you can see, it's beautifully risen and it exhibits almost every single shade of golden brown known to man. You've got fields of wheat, wet sand, mahogany, oat milk latte, ooh, and my favorite, leather wallet. Honestly, this is a pretty wonderful result for such a simple process, and I think any sourdough beginner would be mega stoked to open up this loaf and take a bite. It's crusty, it's sour, it's toasty, and it's full of boozy wheat flavor. I really hope this video inspires you guys to finally give sourdough baking a try, or maybe it'll point some of you guys on the sourdough struggle bus in the right direction and you can finally have your first successful loaf. If you wanna learn how to make your own sourdough starter from scratch, I'm gonna link to a video right here where I show you how to do exactly that. Thanks for watching. Now, let's eat this thing.