The Starter
The starter is a mix of equal parts flour and water stored in a non-airtight container. It needs to be periodically fed in order to keep it alive. This means adding fresh flour and water in equal parts and mixing. It makes sense to feed your starter shortly before (within 8-24 hours) baking with the same amount of starter that you are going to use in the recipe so that it is at its most active to bake with and you maintain an approximately constant volume of starter in the long term. The ratio between flour and water should always be 50:50 or, as bakers put it, a 100% hydration ratio.
- If you feed and bake every two or three days, you do not need to refrigerate your starter.
- If you refrigerate your starter, you can get away with leaving it for at most two or three weeks without being fed.
- If you need to feed your starter but cannot bake, then discard half the starter and replace with fresh flour and water.
The night before I wish to bake bread I remove the starter from the fridge and feed it with 100g of flour (mainly white but usually with some wholemeal and or rye flour mixed in) and 100g of water and leave it out.
Sourdough Recipe
- 200g of recently fed (bubbly) sourdough starter
- 400g of bread flour
- 220ml of water
- 10g of salt
Since the starter is equal parts flour and water, this recipe contains in total 500g of flour and 320ml of water (a 64% hydration ratio).
Mix the starter that was fed the previous night with the flour and water into a rough dough in a bowl, cover and leave to stand for around one hour (autolysing). Put the unused starter back in the fridge if necessary.
Add the salt and then stretch and fold for around ten minutes. Initially the dough will be weak and quite sticky: it will, as you work it, become smooth and stretchy. Add a small amount of oil to the bowl, shape the dough into a tight ball, put back into the bowl and roll it around to coat it in the oil. Cover and leave to rise in a warm, but not hot, position.
When it has doubled in size (2-4 hours) stretch and fold four times, shape the dough into a ball again and cover. Repeat two, three or four times as time permits.
Shape the bread and leave to rise again (1-2 hours), possibly in a floured lined proving basket. When ready turn the shaped dough out onto the peel, dust with flour, slash the top in some pattern, slide onto the stone in a pre-heated steamy oven and bake for around 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. Resist eating it for at least 30 minutes and put it in a airtight container once it has completely cooled.
There are a lot of good videos on YouTube covering the techniques for stretching and folding, and shaping. It’s fun to experiment and in doing so you’ll discover what works for your flour and oven etc.