BREAD AND BAKING

Intro Sourdough bread - The Culture Recipes Wheat bread from the apple starter Wheat bread from the rye starter Where to buy what you need

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Recipes

Recipe 1

Wheat bread from the apple starter; makes 2 loaves approx. 700g

• You need 500g of refreshed wheat leaven for this recipe
• 750g wheat flour (white, brown, wholemeal, as you wish)
• 700-900ml warm water

1. Mix the starter, flour and water in a bowl, then knead like mad on the counter until the dough comes together and starts to feel elastic - about 5-10mins by hand is how long it takes me. The dough should be a bit sticky and tend to stick to your hands / the counter a bit. Paul Hollywood recommends using oil during kneading, to avoid the temptation of adding more flour to combat stickiness (and apparently too much flour makes tough bread) but I tend just to put up with the stickiness. This is where a couple of dough scrapers come in handy, for scraping the dough off the counter and using as extensions of your own hands for kneading wet dough.
   
2. Put the dough back in the bowl, cover with a plastic bag or clingfilm, and leave to rise. This is the long rise (technically known as 'proving') and can be 4-12 hours, so overnight if you want, and the dough will rise a lot. If you leave it too long, it may over-prove (over-rise) and collapse on itself; this is not drastic but may give you a slightly heavier loaf.
   
3. Remove the cover and 'knock the dough back' (even if it has over-proved) - this means punching it a few times (which is a great anti-stress activity!) and folding it in on itself like an envelope, several times. The aim of this part is not to knead it all over again, but to knock the air out of the bread prior to the second rise.
   
4. Divide the dough into two and put it into your loaf tins (or on to your baking sheet).
   
5. Cover (with a large polythene bag, or with Clingfilm ( vershoudfolie ) - or with the traditional teatowel, damp or not, but be aware that your dough may stick messily to it ...) and leave 2-4h to rise again. It may double in size, it may not; so long as it's grown a bit, that should be fine.
   
6. Bake in a preheated oven at 220 ° C or 200 ° C (fan oven), for 35-40mins. Remove from the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.
   
7. This one has two rises to plan around, so is a little trickier. Still, if you let the first rise happen overnight it's easy to have fresh bread for lunch at the weekends.

Recipe 2

Wheat bread from the rye starter: makes 2 loaves approx. 800g.

• You need 160g of refreshed rye sour for this recipe
• 1kg wheat flour (white, brown or wholemeal, as you wish)
• 700g warm water

1. Mix the starter, flour and water in a large bowl. It will slowly come together to make a wet dough, one which is impossible to knead without getting your hands covered in sticky dough. Start kneading on your table/counter, and do not be tempted to add flour to make it less sticky; this dough SHOULD be wet and sticky, that is just fine. Knead for 5-10mins, until the dough is coming together and starting to feel a bit elastic (although still very wet and sticky!). Dough scrapers are also really useful here as for the recipe above.
   
2. Divide into two and put into your loaf tins. I find that this dough is sometimes too fluid to bake on a flat sheet, but if you don't mind a rather spread-out and flat loaf, that's OK. Greasing the tins slightly helps, as because the dough is so wet, occasionally the loaves stick a little.
   
3. Cover as for the wheat leaven bread and leave to rise - overnight (10-12h) preferably, andat least 6h. (If you don't cover it, it will develop a slight dried-out crust, which is not drastic but makes your loaves marginally less beautiful). It will approximately double in size. A short rise time gives a very dense loaf, and if you leave it too long then your loaves will overflow rather...
   
4. Remove the cover and bake in a preheated oven at 220 ° C (200 ° C fan oven) for 40ishmins (slightly longer than the first recipe, as this dough is wetter). The top should be golden brown, not too dark. Remove from the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.
   
5. With its one single rise, this bread is for me the most practical. I can take the starter out of the fridge after work and refresh it, then add flour/water and engage in some mild kneading around ten and leave it (covered) in the tins to rise. First thing the next morning I just turn the oven on and put the loaves in: no more effort involved.