I've not often tried to write down recipes, but i'll give this a shot. Really there are a few steps
- make a starter (takes a few days)
- one evening in the future make a
predough - the next morning make the actual bread dough
Also this can vary and you can bits like seasoning the top with sesame or poppy seeds, and the like. But this is basically what I do.
One more thing. This is actually a small recipe. If you look online people make much larger amounts and end up with multiple loaves, but I feel like I just end up with too much bread. Obviously you could scale this up if you wanted though. If you do scale it up i'd say scale it up on the bread part. The predough should be enough for most of these unless you're scaling up crazy high.
So with those highlevel steps in mind here's what I did
Starters are easy, but they do take a couple of days. I've made these before and probably done it differently, but this time I did it with rye only.
Find a nice glass jar that will hold up to a liter. Add
- 100 ml of luke warm water
- 100 ml of rye flour mix well with a spoon and let it sit
- 50 ml of luke warm water
- 50 ml of rye flour mix well with a spoon and let it sit
- 50 ml of luke warm water
- 50 ml of rye flour mix well with a spoon and let it sit
- 50 ml of luke warm water
- 50 ml of rye flour mix well with a spoon and let it sit
- 50 ml of luke warm water
- 50 ml of rye flour mix well with a spoon and let it sit
By around now you should notice that when you feed your starter that after few hours it's filled with bubbles. Your starters will get better with age, but if you're seeing a lot of activity and bubbles then you're probably good to go. So at this point I stop feeding twice a day and start feeding once a day... On the internet you'll find a whole bunch of opinions, but this is the way I do it.
Anyway, at this point you have a starter and you can use this for breads forever. If you're not baking often enough and are worried you'll overflow your jar you can pour some out. You can also put in the fridge for a week and then take it out once/week and feed it.
Now you've got a starter that's working and bubbling away. The evening before you wanna bake add the following to a bowl
- 100 ml of lukewarm water
- 100 ml of flour. I use
vetemjöl specialfor this exclusively. I'm not sure of the english name unfortunately - 75 ml:ish of your starter Now mix it all up with spoon, cover it with a towel and let it sit overnight.
Now we're gonna take that predough and bake with it.
The following morning take that bowl and add the following to it
- 350 ml of flour (this can vary a bit, but I think your base flour should mostly be wheat (over 50%). I use regular wheat, vetemjöl special, some whole wheat, rye, spelt, etc. Pick what you want here, but the base should be mostly wheat in my opinion
- 250 ml of lukewarm water Now mix this thoroughly ... And this again is how I do it. I take dough beaters and use a mixer and beat it for 5 minutes, but you could do it by hand as well, of course. Cover it with a towel and let it sit.
- 2 - 3 teaspoons of salt (depending on how salty you want it and if you're adding other things)
- some olive oil... I have to be honest I don't measure this. Maybe like a tablespoon I think
- other things if you like... Sometimes I chop olives and add (and if I do I use 2 teaspoons of salt from above 3 is too much if you're also adding olives) or bread spices, or rosemary (which I really like).
This is a 72% baker's percentage ... I won't get it into that here, but you can geek out on that online if you like.
Now for the next two - three hours or so you're going to want to visit the bowl and fold the dough a bit. What I do is wet my hand and then reach down the side of the bowl, grab part of it and try and fold it toward the middle. Then I give the bowl a quarter spin and do it again. I do this 4 times so that if it were a compass I've hit all 4 cardinal directions. When you're done put the towel on and leave it for 30 more minutes. Over time this will make the dough more and more finished. It will start to feel firmer and be easier to pull away from the sides of the bowl. At the beginning it's really liquidy and will be hard to work with.
Sprinkle your counter with flour and pour it out of the bowl and shape it a bit. Don't crush it and push all the air out, but try to pull it a bit and stretch it. I like to take my fingers sort of tuck the dough underneath itself over and over again to build of a sort of surface tension. Do this until it starts to get a rough loaf shape. Then cover it in some flower, put a towel over it and let it sit for maybe 30 minutes to an hour
If you have a banneton basked then sprinkle flour into it, and all around it and then gingerly lift and roll your dough into it. If you don't then just work it into it's final shape and let it sit for at least 1 hour
If you've got a dutch oven then put it into your oven empty and set your oven to broil (275) for half an hour at least. Then take out your dutch oven, pour your dough out of your banneton basket or just lift if you didn't use one onto a sheet of baking paper. Score the bread with a razor or extremely sharp knife to your liking and lift it into the dutch oven. Put the lid on and bake it for 20 minutes. When 20 minutes have passed remove the lid, lower the temperature to 225 and bake for 10 more minutes.
If you don't have dutch oven it's all the same except that you'll pour your dough onto a baking sheet and add a small bowl of water and then carefully put into the oven. Temperatures and such should remain the same.
When time is up turn off the oven and open the door of the oven a crack and let it sit like that for 20 - 30 minutes. Now take it out and let it cool and then eat and enjoy.