Large Sour Dough Loaf

 

You need to have active starter ready to go for this. If you don't, you need to feed up the starter and allow enough time for it to get active. I always have starter in the fridge and it can be fed and active enough in about 8 hours. From active starter to ready to eat loaf you need around 18 hours.

Feed up your starter. You'll need 140g of lively for the recipe and enough to feed up for the next loaf (at least 10g, preferably 25g or so). If you start this early enough in the morning, you can prepare the loaf the same day and put it in the fridge overnight to bake the next morning. Otherwise prep the starter the evening/overnight of day 1, then prep the loaf day 2 and leave it overnight to bake on day 3.

Sour Dough

140g lively starter

580 g flour (strong white or mixture of strong white and malted)

380g lukewarm water

8 - 10g salt

Day 1 

7am Feed 60g starter with 60g organic rye flour and 60g lukewarm water in a large jar. Stir, mark with a rubber band and leave to bubble up and double in size. 

4pm Mix the dough ingredients, leaving remaining starter in the jar. Either put it in the fridge or if you want to make another loaf the next day leave it out and feed it up. You can feed it up and leave it out for a couple of hours before putting it in the fridge to keep it nice and lively.

4.30pm Fold the dough on sprayed wet surface 12 - 15 folds

6.30pm 2nd fold (6 -8 folds), on wet surface

8.30pm 3rd fold (6 -8 folds) on wet surface

9.30pm Fold the dough on floured surface, around 6 folds and put in proofing basket upside down. Put in fridge overnight, uncovered.

Day 2

Take out of the fridge about half an hour to an hour before baking. If not risen much, leave a bit longer at room temperature or in airing cupboard. (It won't have puffed up that much, and will puff up in oven).

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C with lidded Dutch oven inside. 

Turn the loaf into the Dutch oven, replace the lid and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the lid, reduce temperature to 190 degrees C and bake for a further 20 minutes.

Leave to cool before cutting.