Sourdough!

 Hello friends!  If you are here because I gifted you some of my "love" sourdough starter, below you will find (hopefully) most of the information you are looking for to get started on your sourdough journey!  If you have just happened upon my page, welcome!  Hopefully you will also find useful information here.

"Love" (my sourdough starter) is about 6 months old.  I started her at a really weird time in my life, because I currently don't have an oven to bake bread in.  However, that's for another post.  I bake at my daughter's house, my mother's apartment, and lately I have been making my loaves in my crockpot!  I also have made many other things with "love" and she has truly been amazing.  I'm so happy to share her!

In your jar, is fed and active starter.  Here are your options:

• Feed it and use it for bread in 8-12 hours
• Get a larger clean jar, place it on your kitchen scale and then set it to zero grams.
• Pour the starter I gave you into the larger jar
• Once it's all in the big jar, take note of how many grams of starter there is.
• Add the same amount of spring bottled water and the same amount of bread flour
• Example: 50g of starter, add 50g water, add 50g bread flour
• Put the jar of starter in your fridge until you are ready to use it.  Keep in mind, it will take a couple feedings 8-12 hours apart before it's ready to bake with once out of the fridge.

Ready to make your first loaf?  There are many variations and recipes for sourdough out there, but here is a basic one I follow:

• Put your bowl on your kitchen scale and set it to zero grams
• Add 350g bottled spring water
• Set your scale to zero again, then add 100g of fed and active starter (you'll notice it floats)
• Whisk the starter into the water until it looks like foamy milk
• Set your scale to zero again, then add 500g bread flour
• You can replace 50g of the bread flour with rye or whole wheat (super yummy)
• Set your scale to zero again, then add 10g fine sea salt
• Whisk or stir everything together until you have a shaggy dough (you can use your hands too)
• Cover your bowl and let it sit for about an hour
• Get your hands wet, and do one set of stretch and folds (you can find plenty of videos and examples of how to do this online)
• Do 3-4 sets of stretch and folds 30 minutes apart
• Cover your bowl with plastic (I love the throw away "shower cap" bowl covers from amazon)
• Let sit overnight or all day (8-12 hours) until the dough has doubled and you see bubbles on top
• Pour your dough out onto your counter or a large cutting board, stretch it into a rectangle, then fold both long sides over to the center and roll up from the short end.  Pull your ball of dough in a circular motion to build surface tension, then place bottom side up in a banneton lightly floured with rice flour (or any other flour, I like rice flour), cover and put into your fridge for several hours, overnight, or all day.
• Put your dutch oven into your oven and preheat to 450 degrees.  
• Dump out your loaf onto a piece of parchment paper, put rice flour on top and then score as desired.  Typically you'll want one deeper score which is where the loaf will "pop" open, but try different things and get creative, it's really fun!
• Baked covered for 30 minutes, then take lid off and bake for 15 more minutes.
• Take out of the oven and let cool for at least 2 hours, but longer if you can stand it.

Ok, friends that's it for this post! I have so many other things to share and tips and tricks, but I will post more another time. - Allison