Best recipe for sourdough bread

This is the best recipe for making sourdough bread. I've tried many sourdough bread recipes online, and from books, and after decades of experimenting and tinkering, this is the best version.

Prep Time1

Active Time1

Resting and proving time1

Total Time1 2

Course: Bread

Cuisine: Ancient Egypt, French

Keyword: Bread, Sourdough

Yield: 2 Large loaves

Cost: £1

Equipment

1 Large mixing bowl (Lightly floured)
1 Breakfast or soup bowl for flour (You'll need flour for dusting things, and this is handy, particularly as it means you don't cover your flour bag in dough)
1 Small bowl for salt (Like a little tapas bowl or similar)
2 Bannetons / proving baskets You can use 1.5 kg / litre capacity mixing bowls here, lined with a very clean tea towel and well dusted with flour, but I'd recommend buying bannetons early on
1 'Peel' - or a similar tool to move your loaf from your prep area to your oven (consider buying one)
1 Oven stone - as above, one of three bits of specific 'bread baking equipment' that I think it's important to get early on
1 Lame or razor blade - you might be able to get away with an incredibly sharp knife, but a sharper blade is best here

Materials

700 g Strong White Bread Flour High end organic, or cheapest in the shop. Test different options to find out what you like.
90 g Spelt Flour If you can't find any, you can just add this additional quantity of the strong white bread flour, but spelt does improve the flavour of your bread
650 g Water
400 g Sourdough Ferment Check out my recipe for making a ferment, before you bake
25 - 30 g Salt Table salt, flaked sea salt, or other. Again, experiment to find what you like, it will only make a small different to the flavour

Instructions

Before you start...

A few hours before you start, take your ferment out of the fridge so it can get up to room temperature before you need it to be lively with your flour.

First step - making the dough (approx 40 mins)

Start by clearing your worktop, and wiping everything down. Having an open space to work where you're not worried about puffs of flour covering other things is very helpful. Also at this stage I always fill a breakfast/soup sized bowl with white bread flour for dusting.
Very lightly flour the chopping board or worktop that you are going to use to make bread on. Think 'dusting' rather than snowdrifts here.
Measure out 400g of your ferment into your large mixing bowl. Leave the rest in your ferment bowl - you'll refresh this in a minute and put it back in the fridge.
Add in your flour and water. Now it's time to get messy! Try to keep as much of your mixture in the bowl as possible, while energetically mixing it all together.
And keep mixing :) This will feel like it takes a while when you first start. That's fine. It's an important step. Spend at least ten minutes mixing (set a timer so you don't just stop when your arm gets tired!)
Your mixture will eventually 'come together' i.e. form a dough enough that you can pick it up from your bowl and it will all stick together. So... lift it out of your bowl and put it on your lightly floured chopping board or worktop.
Before you get completely covered in wet dough, to reduce your washing up, now's the time to make sure you've got all the dough out of your large mixing bowl, and then lightly dust the mixing bowl with the white flour from your smaller bowl.
Now, that ten minute timer you were just cursing was taking thirty minutes? Please start it again now.
This is where you go from mixing your ingredients, to pulling and folding the dough. Richard Bertinet demonstrates folding brilliantly in this video.
You'll probably feel this ten minutes of folding in the muscles of your shoulders, forearms or fingers! Once that timer goes off again, you can add your salt to your dough that should be starting to feel quite tight now. You'll notice the salt changes the texture of it immediately.
Keep folding for a couple more minutes to ensure the salt is completely worked into the dough, and your dough is holding together and starting to look smooth, rather than just sticky.
Put your dough back in your mixing bowl, and cover it with a tea towel.
Allow it (and you!) to rest for one hour

Second step - 'knocking it back' (2 - 3 mins)

Knocking it back is what this step is traditionally known as. Basically you want to release the CO2 from your dough (your natural yeast has been busily creating CO2 while fermenting). I like Bertinet's French version which is essentially more folding here - far more civilised! This folding strengthens and lightens the 'crumb' (the stuff inside the crust) making it rise more when you finally bake.
Ensure your mixing bowl still has a little dusting of flour, then pop your dough back in.
Rest for one hour.

Third/last step of production - shaping (15 mins)

Put a good layer of flour into your bannetons / tea towel lined bowls at this stage. You'll be putting a fairly sticky dough into them shortly, and you really don't want them to have stuck when you come to take them out tomorrow. For an alternative, you could also line them with oats or seeds.
Lightly dust your worktop again, then turn your dough out onto it.
Cut your dough into two (if you want to make two large loaves of approx. 900g each). You could also make one large loaf, and use the other 900g to make 3x baguettes or two smaller loaves. You'd just have to shape them differently.
To shape your dough, you basically do more folding. Pull the dough edge furthest from you up, and push it down onto the edge closest to you. Rotate the dough a bit (90 degrees is simple), and repeat. You will notice your dough getting firmer and smoother the more you fold it now. As you keep pulling the far side up, you'll probably start to only pull it as far as the middle of your dough, and just keep that 'seam' roughly on the top. You can imagine the bottom of your dough as you look at it is getting pulled tighter and tighter at this point, like a bread face lift!
If you want a round loaf, just keep rotating as above until it feels firm. If you're looking for a long shaped loaf, start focusing on folding from the far side, then rotating the dough 180 degrees so you're dough starts to get wider like a rugby ball. If you want to do baguettes, then start the 180 rotating early.
Put your dough into your banneton / tea towel lined bowl 'seam' side up, so that the 'tight skin' you've created is facing down into the flour / oats / seeds you've lined the banneton with. This tight bit will be the top of your loaf. Cover the banneton / bowl with a tea towel. It should be feeling quite strong now, and a lot less sticky,
Rest overnight somewhere with a relatively warm and stable temperature. Boiler cupboards are a popular choice!

Baking day! (35 mins per loaf)

One hour before you want to bake, switch your oven on to 250°C (or as high as your oven goes), and ensure your baking stone / tile / tray is in the bottom of the oven to warm through.
Immediately before you get your bannetons / lined bowls. Put a baking tray or similar into your oven on a tray well above your baking stone / tray, and add between 500ml to 1l of water to it.
Heavily flour your peel or whatever you will use to slide the loaf onto your baking stone. Marvel at how much your dough has risen overnight, and turn one out on to your peel.
Time is of the essence here as your loaf is no longer supported by the sides of the banneton / bowl, so you don't want it sitting on the peel for too long.
Slash the top of the dough with your razor or lame. This is one of the most fun parts of the process once you get the hang of things. I've done Christmas trees, safari animals and sunrises here - a whole world of possibilities!
Slide your loaf into your oven, and onto your baking stone / tray. Try to have your oven door open for the shortest amount of time possible as you want to retain as much heat inside as you can.
Set your trusty timer to 25 minutes and wait. It's critical you don't open the door for the first 5 - 8 minutes as that's the crucial time when your bread does the most rising.
At some point between the 15 and 20 minute mark, rotate your bread 180° to make up for any heat inconsistencies in your oven, and ensure it develops a crunchy crust all round.
At the 25 minute mark, peek in and see how it's looking. How long you bake it for at this point becomes personal preference, and will also depend on your oven. If you like a thick crunchy crust, leave it longer, up to 30 - 32 minutes. Or for a lighter, softer crust you can pull it out at the 25 minute mark. I tend to aim for 28 minutes.
Take your beautiful sourdough loaf out of the oven and give it a quick tap on the bottom to ensure it sounds hollow (you want to ensure it's completely baked).
Pop it on a metal rack to cool, and every 5 mins or so move it so the rack doesn't create lines in the bottom of your loaf. Now go back to the start of the 'baking day' instructions if you have other loaves to bake.

Notes

As you can see from the ingredients, this healthy home-made sourdough really only has 4 ingredients, in the same way it used to when they first started making it in Ancient Egypt. Well, actually, I have no idea about that - they may have used extract of crocodile foot in Ancient Egyptian bread. But what I do know is if you buy bread in a shop, it will be full of crap you really don't want to be eating. Not only that, but once you've had good homemade sourdough, shop bought will feel like they've just shmushed breadcrumbs together and called it bread. The texture of homemade is hard to beat.

If you go to a baking shop, there's serious equipment everywhere! Personally, for great results I think you only need the following:

Peel
Baking Stone (or very thick tile / offcut from stone kitchen worktop)
Bannetons
Lame or a razor blade on a stick

The peel is probably most important as it helps you get your dough into the oven as quickly as possible, with the least disturbance to it's structure. Something like a baking stone will seriously improve the rise of your loaf, so I would argue these are pretty indispensible - they ensure a constant heat going into your dough, something modern ovens aren't designed for. A couple of bannetons make life a lot easier, and they're cheap to pick up. And if you want to give beautiful finishing touches to your loaf, a lame really ups your game from fumbling around with razor blades, or pulling the 'skin' of your dough too much with a sharp knife.