Sourdough No-Knead Bread
I fell in love with the NYT no-knead bread recipe. Al loves it too so it's renewed my interest in making my own sourdough and using organic grains. I adapted the recipe to make a bread using unbleached bread flour and whole wheat, and my homemade sourdough starter. Below is the recipe and photos showing the steps I went through for fantastic homemade sourdough bread.
Anne's Sourdough No-Knead Bread (adapted from James Lahey's recipe found in the NYT)
Into a mixing bowl:
2 cups organic unbleached bread flour
1 cup organic whole wheat flour
1/2 cup homemade sourdough starter
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1 cup spring water
Mix ingredients together simply until a shaggy dough is combined. Add more water or flour if needed. Cover with plastic wrap, place in a warm undisturbed part of kitchen for 18-24 hours. Your shaggy dough should look somewhat like mine...
Your dough may be ready before 18 hours, sometimes I check mine at 12 hours and it has worked just fine if I go ahead and shape it then, but it doesn't hurt to leave it longer either. Here's what your shaggy dough should have turned into by 18-24 hours.
At this point dough is sticky, but bubbly and well risen. Punch dough down (you can use a wooden spoon to mix it into a ball or well floured hands) and let rest on a flour covered parchment paper sheet (or silpat or wax paper). Then fold the dough over itself two or three times and shape into a ball. Cover with a very floury kitchen towel or use a large plastic bag and sprinkle the top of dough with flour or cornmeal to keep it from sticking to the plastic and let rise for 2 hours. At the 1 1/2 hour mark, turn oven on to 500*F and heat the pan you'll be using (per NYT instructions). Once the dough has risen for 2 hours, pull out the pan, life the lid and carefully flop the risen dough into the pan, place the lid on top and shove into hot oven (be really careful, I burned myself and have a red scar now). Let it bake at 500*F for 30 minutes covered, then take off lid and bake another 15 minutes. Then let it sit out of the pan for at least 1/2 hour before slicing into.
Sourdough Starter
1 cup organic wheat flour (white or whole wheat, either is fine)
1 cup spring water
Mix the flour and water in a large mason jar and let sit on kitchen counter. Every day add (feed) your starter 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 water, stir, and let sit again. You will have to remove some to keep enough "rising" room in your jar. You can either throw it out or add it to another jar and give away to friends or use in pancakes. After a couple days it will smell like wine or beer and be frothy. You can use it usually after a couple days, but it gets better after a couple weeks and can be kept indefinitely. I refridgerate mine after a couple weeks to reduce the amount of feeding necessary. Once you refridgerate it, make sure you pull it out once a week, let it warm up and then feed it again. Let it sit out after feeding for a day and the put back in fridge. That's it!
