Once your starter is bubbly and active, and has doubled in size, now you can mix up your dough. I feed my starter in the evening, to rise overnight, and mix the dough in the morning.
My starter is in two half gallon jars here, to allow enough room for expansion without running over. If you look closely, you can see that my starter has actually risen higher (about an inch higher), but has now fallen. This is still active starter, but it’s starting to get hungry. I should have mixed the dough a little bit earlier, but this is when I got to it.
Some may be stricter on this than I am. I couldn’t get into the kitchen to bake an hour earlier, so this will do. At this point, it hasn’t fallen a ton from peak rise, and I know from experience that this will still rise my dough enough.
Today I am mixing a bowl that will make 3 loaves.
Once again, I’m using a scale to measure ingredients. It gives so much more consistent results.
Starter
Water
Flour
When you mix the dough the first time, you will get a really shaggy dough. A dough whisk is great for this. I have carpal tunnel and right now I can’t grip the whisk, so I glove up and mix it by hand. It’s super therapeutic and works well. Yes the dough sticks to my glove, but not too badly. It’s easier to scrape the dough off my hand when it’s gloved than to scrape it off a bare hand.
Once everything is thoroughly combined, I cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, you can see that the dough has relaxed some and is starting to rise.
Now it’s time for the first set of stretch and folds. The dough is not very elastic yet. You want to grab one side, stretch it up, and pull it over to the other side. I do 4 stretch and folds, one for each “side” (as if the dough were a square). Sometimes I’ll do a few extra stretches and folds right then, but not too many more.
This is where practically everyone gives different advice. I aim to come back for a second set of stretch and folds another 30 minutes later. I have to set a timer or I absolutely won’t remember to do it.
In this next picture you can see that the dough is getting smoother. This is what it looks like for the second set of stretch and folds.
Tuck your dough into place and cover it again with plastic wrap. This is where I just walk away and let it be at this point.
This time of year I usually shape my dough into loaves around dinnertime, depending on what time I mixed up the dough in the morning and how warm my kitchen was that day.
You want your dough to double. Our kitchen is fairly cool, and right now during winter that usually takes about 8 hours. The temperature of your kitchen and your climate will definitely affect how long it takes your dough to double. We’re in far Northern Maine, so it’s not warm here right now at all. When it’s warmer your dough will rise faster.
This is what it looks like when I came back later that evening. There are some bubbles and the dough has risen signifigantly and smoothed out a lot.
I spray the counter down with pan spray, and dump the dough out on the counter. You could use olive oil or something else if you don’t like pan spray.
A plastic dough scraper with a rounded edge is very helpful in scraping the dough out!
I make 900 gram loaves and will get 3 nice loaves plus a little left over from this amount.
Once again, a kitchen scale is SO helpful. You can do sourdough without one, but since I’m selling these in my bakery I want to ensure they’re all consistent in size. I’m not very good at eyeballing it so the scale makes it easy.
This is another area that you’ll get all sorts of advice on: shaping. I just dump the dough out on the counter, pat it into a rough rectangle, and then fold it up. Sides and ends in. From there it depends what shape loaf I’m making. If I’m using bread pans, I do the shape below and then one more roll up to fit it neatly in a bread pan.
For a round boule shape, I’ll flip the dough over and pull it toward me while rotating the dough at the same time. The pulling motion helps keep the surface of the dough tighter and makes a pretty loaf.
If you’re baking a round boule, you’ll want to place the round ball into the banneton or proofing bowl seam side up, since you’ll be turning it out later to score and bake it.
If you’re baking in a bread pan, place the dough seam side down and cover the pan for the next rise.
Cover your dough and place in the fridge to ferment overnight. Again, I use plastic wrap. It does such a good job of keeping the bread from drying out.
I’ve gotten the best results when the fridge is at 37*. Ideally you want to see rise by the next morning. If your fridge is too close to freezing, your dough won’t rise at all overnight. I’ve noticed that the bread rises higher overall if the fridge isn’t too too cold.
My bread is usually in the fridge about 12 hours.
I’ll put baking the bread in another post as this one got really long!
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