Sourdough Bread Recipe from a Yeast Starter to make at home with just 4 easy steps!

Sourdough Bread Recipe

Bread is the staff of life. But dough is what we’re working with, and we take that dough to the oven, and it goes into the oven. As soon as the interior temperature of that dough crosses the threshold of 140 degrees, it passes what we call the “thermal death point.” But it’s the thermal death point — all life ceases there.

The yeast, whose mission it has been up till now to raise the dough, to enliven it, to vivify it, in order to complete its mission, which is also to turn this dough into bread, has to give up its life. So you see the symbolism at work? It’s starting to come forth a little bit, you know. It’s starting to make sense to me — what goes in is dough, what comes out is bread — or it goes in alive, comes out dead. First transformation, alive to dead. Second transformation, dead brought back to life. Third transformation, alive to dead — but dough to bread.

Peter Reinhart, TED Talk: The Art and Craft of Bread

Making sourdough bread is truly an art and a science and, probably, a craft. We have been making sourdough bread every week for several months already and enjoy it. It taste delicious, it smells indescribable, it preserves for a few weeks on a counter. We stopped buying bread from a store. However, it is a challenge to make it right the first time.

It takes time to learn, for us it took several tries before it turned delicious. It seems we put the same ingredients and use the same process but the bread tastes different every time it goes out of the oven. There is so much behind the bread making – the pH, produced carbon dioxide gas, live yeast, temperature of the home and so on. Making bread worth all the tries before you perfect it and, maybe, it will be delicious from your first try. Try it!

Authors: Alla Beauchamp and Ludmila Klimchuk original authors, slightly adopted.

Prep: 15 mins

Idle time:  5+ hours

Easy to Moderate

Serves & stores: 2 medium size loaves or one large; from one week to two to three weeks on a counter

INGREDIENTS for the Sourdough Recipe:

• 2/3 of Rye starter (see our recipe on it)
• 2 tbsp of cane turbinado sugar
• 2 tbsp of oil
• 1 tbsp of Himalayan salt 
• 3 – 3.5 c. whole wheat flour (or other whole wheat and bread flour)
• 1/4 cup of unsulphured molasses (optional)
• 1/4 c. grounded flax seeds (optional)

TOOLS the Sourdough Recipe:

Tilt-head stand mixer with a dough hook

VARIATIONS:

• add nuts, seeds, dried fruits to taste
• play with different types of flour 
• you can eliminate molasses ingredient, color will be lighter

4 EASY STEPS to Make a Sourdough Recipe from Scratch:

1. Measure, combine and mix all the ingredients in a bowl of a tilt-stand mixer with a dough hook.
2. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.
3. Place the dough inside a glass or bread bowl, coat with oil and cover with a food wrap or damp cloth-cover and let rise until doubled or tripled in volume, about 4+ hours
4. cut the top of the bread in a form of a leave to shape it when rising and 
5. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

And voila! It’s done!