This recipe is a combination of Mark Bittman's recipe for sourdough from his excellent How to Cook Everything, and the Bittman/Lahey no-knead bread recipe that the internet loves so much.
To make sourdough bread, you first need a starter. It takes about a day or two to make – almost all unattended – but once you have it it's easy to maintain and use again and again. Here's Bittman's procedure for making a starter:
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (bread flour is fine too)
- 1/4 tsp instant yeast
- 1 cup warm water
Mix it all up and put it in a container with a lid. Put it somewhere warm and out-of-the-way, like on top of the fridge. Stir every 8 to 12 hours; if liquid rises to the top, don't worry – just stir it back in. The starter is ready to use when it starts to get bubbly.
Now on to making the bread itself! In addition to the starter you prepared in the previous step, you will need:
- 1 pound flour (about 3 1/2 cups)
- Most of this should be white bread flour, but I like to put in some (about 10–20%) whole wheat and/or rye flour as well.
- 1 1/3 cups water (plus more if needed)
- 1/4 tsp instant yest
- 2 tsp kosher salt (or 1 tsp table salt)
Put half your starter in a medium to large bowl. Put in all the other ingredients, listed above. Stir it up with a rubber or silicone spatula (it’ll stick too much to a wooden spoon). If it doesn’t look like all the flour is incorporating, add a little more water, a tablespoon or so at a time. The finished dough should be coherent, but shaggy, and will stick to your fingers if you touch it. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it somewhere out of the way for at least 14 and up to 24 hours (the timing here is quite flexible).
This is a good time to refresh your sourdough starter. Add in about 3/4 cup flour and 1 cup water, and stir it up thoroughly. Cover and store in the fridge for next time you make some bread. If that's going to be tomorrow, just leave it out. If it goes about a week without being used, throw out half of it and refresh again. It should, in theory, last forever if given this treatment, and there are starters out there that have been going for hundreds of years.
The dough is ready for the next step when its surface has little bubbles on it; the volume of the dough will have increased by a factor of two to three. First (this is the way I do it, though the pans here are negotiable), prepare a loaf pan by cutting a piece of parchment and laying it in the pan – you want the sides of the parchment to drape over the rim of the loaf pan.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and fold it over itself a couple of times, like you’re folding a letter to fit in an envelope. Let it sit for 15 minutes, then plop it onto the parchment in the prepared pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for two to three hours.
Half an hour before you’re ready to bake the bread – that is, half an hour before the end of this second rise – adjust your oven so there is a rack in the lowest position, with a fair amount of space above it, and preheat the oven to 450° and put a second loaf pan in it while it heats.
When the oven has been heating for half an hour and the bread is done rising the second time – it will spring back slowly when poked – you can pick up the parchment paper sling and use it to easily transfer the bread into the second loaf pan. Cover the pan the bread is in with the other pan, inverted; this will allow steam to build up and form a nice crust. Bake like this for about 20 minutes, then remove the covering pan and bake another 15–20 minutes or until it looks good. Cool on a rack.
A note on the pans: they are, as I said above, negotiable. You can bake with just one loaf pan and cover it with aluminum foil, doing the second rise in a bowl. You can bake in a dutch oven (this is actually Bittman’s suggested method for the original no-knead bread). People have been known to bake in unglazed flower pots. However, I find the loaf pans to be the easiest, and the finished product has a convenient shape.
Finally, a rescue method: today I turned some dough out to fold, and noticed that it was way too wet since I hadn’t been paying attention when I mixed it. There was clearly no way I was going to shape this dough. So I made it into flatbread instead – stick an oven-safe skillet, like cast-iron or stainless steel, in the oven at 425° with a tbsp or two of oil in it, and maybe some herbs or onions sitting in the oil. When the oil is fragrant – not smoking – pour in your dough. Bake for about half an hour, until the dough pulls away from the pan and is a nice color on top. The flatbread is good with butter, or cheese, or…
