15 Mistakes Most Beginner Sourdough Bakers Make

Personally, I think baking

sourdough

bread from scratch is the

most

rewarding thing you can do in the kitchen. There really isn't anything better, but that reward carries a direct correlation with a lot of pain, agony, failure, and blunders. It's just part of the game. Over the years I've seen all kinds of

mistakes

when it comes to

sourdough

bread and it really is part of the journey, so today I want to do a dish breakdown or a loaf breakdown, in this case, about How to Bake Sourdough Bread will really give you confidence in your sourdough journey and show you all the tips you need to

make

amazing sourdough bread at home, so the first tip for making great sourdough bread at home. home and probably the

most

underrated thing about the whole process is having a really healthy activity. sourdough starter this is the life force of your bread this is the yeast this is what gives it flavor this is what gives it rise and without having a healthy starter that is super active you are simply not going to get great results and I can 'I can't tell you how many people send in their bread and I can instantly tell that the results of their bread weren't great because they don't have an active sourdough starter at home, they can feed it multiple times, they start the process and it's not up to the level for

make

really good bread, so you need to feed it once a day, ideally twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening and really all that a sourdough starter is is a combination of flour and water and equal parts mixed. together to create a culture for the wild yeast and bacteria in their environment and this is the original way bread was made for thousands of years and the reason people are going back to sourdough, more flavor, fermentation longer, healthier for you compared to just an active dry yeast, which will be a faster fermentation, you won't get the flavor and you won't get those health benefits from long fermentation, the breakdown of that is the first thing you'll do in the sourdough process.

It's refeeding your sourdough starter, you probably gave it some flour and water the day before and it used up all the sugar from the starch. The yeast needs more food to activate, but what I like to do is instead of just throwing this in the trash. Should I chop some chives or some scallions? I take a pan on medium heat and I pour my sourdough into the pan and I just fry it because that's a good sourdough, a delicious fried dough. I add a little bit of the scallions add a little bit of spice this time I'm adding a little bit of zatar.

I have a whole video on this. You can click above if you want the details, but the key is to simply not throw away the sourdough starter when it's not activated. use it, it's delicious, this right here is one of the best things you'll ever taste, it's just fermented fried bread, it's a little bit of spice, a little bit of chives, you can dip it in a little sauce, it's a great breakfast or just a delicious snack so now that we've made some room in our jar we've got some sourdough starter in the bottom and we're going to feed it again and I'm going to use equal parts flour and water so I'm going to use 75 grams of flour and 75 grams of water and I use a toothpick to mix this.

I think it works great until it's fully incorporated and ready to use. It's okay to put the lid on the starter and just leave it. They activate for about three to five hours at room temperature. Tip number two is to make sure you automatically rent the bread, which is a step many people skip, but it's so crucial to the gluten structure of the dough that you might wonder. What is the structure of gluten? Well, it's pretty simple. Gluten is made up of two main proteins, so these proteins are in flour, you have gliadin and gluten, and they both have different shapes and when you add water to flour.

Basically, these two proteins come together and when they come together they form gluten and gluten is amazing because there are little pockets between these bonds where CO2 can get trapped and gluten is special because it stretches when fermentation happens and the CO2 is released, it stays stuck here and stretches the gluten structure and that's how the dough expands and by automatically leasing the dough, it will start the whole process before automatically leasing our bread, we need to learn one more thing, which is Tip number three using the percentages of Baker's and Baker's Percentages is great because you can easily calculate the hydration level of your dough and it's also easy to expand your recipe and make multiple loaves, that's why Baker's uses Baker's Percentages, so to make it really easy, We are going to use a thousand grams of flour for this recipe, it all depends on the amount of flour, so if you have 800 grams of water, that is 80% hydration, it is a very easy calculation, if you want 75% hydration, 750 grams of flour and then the other two ingredients. they're just your starter and they're 150 grams of starter which is 15% we're still removing the flour and then the 2% salt would be 20 grams of salt so it's all really easy to calculate and manipulate and expand if you're using

bakers

percentages so I'm going to get out the scale and start weighing my flour and again we just need to get to a thousand grams of flour so you can add whatever flowers you want and I'm just going to add a mix.

I got about 600 grams of white flour, then I added about 300 grams of whole wheat flour and then the last 100 grams was just some spelled flour and some corn flour that I had in the pantry, so tip number Four is simply reducing the hydration level of the sourdough bread, as we said before, hydration is just the percentage of water in the dough and when it comes to sourdough, it is a very wet dough, so it is really complicated to handle it , it's not like a pizza. dough that you're used to, which is nice and firm and not sticky, so most people go for a recipe that's going to be like 80% hydration and they've never dealt with a wet dough and they run into something clingy. situations we'll get to later, so what I suggest is going down to around 70%, maybe 75% of the hydration level if you're a

beginner

, and although your final loaf may not be as airy as a loaf with an 80 % hydration, it will be It's a lot easier to deal with and you'll save yourself a lot of trouble by just lowering the hydration a little bit, so I'll add water to my flour and use about 77% hydration because I know what.

I'm doing, I've been doing this for a while and then I'm just going to mix them together and this is the process of leasing your car, you're not kneading it, you're just putting these two ingredients together until they form this. little butt here as long as the flour and water are incorporated that's it you can let it sit so now we need to double check our starter it's been a few hours at room temperature and it's activated but the question is when do you use your sourdough when you add it to the dough and that's tip number five is knowing the right point to use your sourdough so you really want to use your sourdough when it's at its peak activation point and knowing at what point There are a few things you can keep in mind: one that will at least double its size.

You can see it almost triples in size, maybe even quadruples in size. This thing is super active and you can also see that it is still slightly rounded at the top of the starter motor. and that is a very good sign that it has not started to deflate yet, so it is still feeding on flours, it has not completely run out of food and it also has a very pleasant spicy smell. I guess it's nice, you know, depending on if you want it. than that sourness, but the smell should be a little spicy at this point, another technique you can use to test if your sourdough starters are ready is the float test where you simply take a tablespoon of starter, put it in a little water and if it floats, you know. at least you have something that will make bread, so now that our sourdough starter is ready and activated, we're going to add it to our self-lease dough, so we're going to pour 150 grams of the starter over the dough and then we're going to add our 2% of salt, which is only 20 grams, and just start incorporating it, start mixing it until it's incorporated and it won't be smooth at all because we have all that salt and we have different textures between the starter. and the dough, but don't worry as it settles and as you work on the dough it will completely change.

I want to take a quick break from sourdough to thank the sponsor of this video who is audible and I have been using audible and crushing audiobooks for years. I love getting in the kitchen and making some homemade food while listening to a good audiobook and right now I'm listening to an epic one by Ed Levine, the creator of Sirius Eats, his book is called Serious Eater and it's just It's a pleasure to listen to the way that describes food, it's amazing, it makes me happy, and also hearing about the explosion of food blogs in the mid-2000s seems really interesting to be in the food space, so right now, for one For a limited time offer, you can get Audible for just $695 a month, which is more than half the regular price.

It has one audiobook and two Audible Originals, which are exclusive Audible titles created by celebrated storytellers, all absolutely free. Visit audible.com. Reduce Pro Home Cooks or Tex Pro Home Cooks to 500 500. It's that time of year to give gifts. An audible membership would be an amazing gift for your friends, family, or even yourself, so be sure to check out audible.com. Trim the Home Cooks Pro or the Home Cooks Tex Pro to 500 500 for your Now we're back to some sourdough so we're officially fermenting once the starter arrives the fermentation of the dough has begun and now we move on to developing that gluten structure that actually works into the dough through a stretching and folding process that will take about two hours.

Every 30 minutes you will repeat this stretch and fold process and you will see that each stretch and fold of your dough will completely change texture and that is a great sign that your gluten is continuing to develop, you are creating a stronger dough. dough and that brings us to tip number seven, which is knowing when the stretching and folding process is finished and you will see that once we get to the fourth fold of stretching, the dough has completely changed, it is soft, it is flexible, it is starting to separate . the sides a little and you can see the rounded edge on the side of the dough, which is a good sign that the structure is starting to form, whereas before the dough would have sunk completely into the sides and formed a flat surface , so you're looking for all these little key elements to know that you've developed the structure of your dough, now that we've finished the stretching and folding process, we're going to move on to increasing the volume, which is where you actually develop the volume in your dough a little of that gas through fermentation and the best part of this, which is tip number eight, is that you can do it on schedule.

Many people think that sourdough bread is something they can't get because it is a long process and yes. It's long, but you can fit it into your schedule due to the slow fermentation process. You can work with the fermentation, so when I finished my full stretching process it was later in the day and I didn't have time to let it sit. Coming out to room temperature and rising would take 4-6 hours so what I did was put it in the fridge and let it ferment overnight because it's colder in the fridge which will slow down the fermentation process and I can do it again. in the morning now, if you have time, you can let them rise at room temperature, then you can form your loaves and put them in the refrigerator.

It all depends on your schedule. You're working the sourdough on your schedule, that's why I created. These checklist sourdough guides above will help you no matter what schedule you have. I have a guide for a 9 to 5. someone who is self-employed. someone who likes to stay up late at night. Click the link if you want the perfect guide for your program so that my dough ferments overnight and I take it out in the morning and you can see some of those fermentation bubbles, it has gained a little volume, it looks great, it smells okay, it smells like sourdough, we're ready to shape our lows. which brings us to tip number 9, which is finding the perfect balance between stickiness and dryness of the dough.

How much flour do you use? I see a lot of people at this point feeling super overwhelmed by the moisture and stickiness of their dough. dough and I start adding all this flour, but you need some stickiness in the dough to form the loaves and get them into the right shape, but you can't have it too sticky or it will just stick everywhere, so it will definitely take time to develop. One of the trickiest parts of making sourdough bread at home, but over time you'll get that feeling and remember this bench scraper here. This thing is your friend.

Think of it as a non-stick coating because the dough doesn't stick. stick with the bench scraper, but it will surely stick to your hand, so take advantage, I divided my dough into two pieces andI'm giving you a rough shape right here and this shape doesn't matter that much, I'm just giving you that. loose shape before we actually refine it and give it a final shape and we just let them rest in a little bit of flour on the board and cover them and let the bench rest for 30 minutes before moving on to the final shape. So these right here are your banana cans or your fermentation baskets where the dough sits to hold its shape and ferment, but tip number 10 is to just remember to generously flour these banana cans because remember you're dealing with a dough. very wet and if you don't generously flour these things then you could have the dough sticking to the sides and when you've gone through the whole process you're ready to bake and your dough sticks to the proofing basket, it's not fun and you can always just remove the excess flour.

Then the sore dough has been seasoned for 30 minutes and we're ready to shape our bottoms, get our final shape in there and tip it. Number 11 is that there is no perfect way to shape dough. There are so many different techniques available and you really just have to go in and try. You can find a million techniques on Instagram. I've been to bakeries. I have seen so many. There are different styles for shaping dough, but you're really trying to achieve a few key things. What I like to do is simply add a little flour to the surface of the dough on the board and then flatten the dough. just stretch it out a little bit so you have some surface area to work with, then I take the two closest corners and I start folding them and that's why you don't want too much flour because if there's too much flour these corners won't stick now, one once it's folded, you're going to start folding it back on itself and you're really trying to generate some surface tension here by folding the dough back on itself, but you don't want to deflate it.

At this point you've worked really hard to build all that nice air into your dough and keep doing it and make sure to fold the seams and let it sit on your board for a few seconds so the seam is on the bottom. it seals completely and then what I like to do is just roll it in some sesame seeds, sesame sourdough, it's just unbeatable and once it's in the sesame seeds, you can put it right in your Benetton. You should also make sure that once it is in the Benetton. that you go around the sides and flour the sides because your dough is going to ferment there and if it ferments to the sides and they are not flour, that is an easy way for the dough to stick to the sides now our dough has to ferment in baskets and if you haven't put it in the refrigerator yet for the bulk rise, you can put it in the refrigerator now if it's late at night and let it sit overnight or you can just do it at room temperature for about two to three hours and that brings us to tip 12, how do you know when your dough is ready to go in the oven?

Well, you'll use something called a push test and it's very simple, you give the dough a little tap and it pops. completely back to the surface and doesn't leave a dent, you have to let it sit for a little longer if you push it and it just leaves a big dent and doesn't come back at all, it's probably over proof, perfect spot. What you're looking for is when you push it and it jumps back a little and still leaves a slight dent, that's when you know your dough is perfectly proofed and ready to go in the oven, so ideally you have one of these oven type Dutch. things that you can throw in your oven that will mimic a real steam oven because when the dough rises it gives off steam and it gets trapped in that dutch oven which will help it rise and help the color so preheat your dutch oven to 500 or 550 degrees for at least 30 minutes, ideally an hour and we're ready to bake our lows, ovens pop, the most exciting part of making sourdough, you never know how it's going to turn out until you see we have a good ear, right? here, but the crust is super light, so we take the lid off and now we slide this baby back to caramelize the crust and finish it and one more tip, take a tray like this, above, here a lot of people have problems with their crusts coming together.

They burn deep, that's great advice. Sliding it down will help the crust burn, so lower the oven temperature. We have a nice dark brown caramelized crust, it's beautiful and a lot of people don't make it. I don't cook the bread long enough and I think this is where a lot of flavor can develop so instead of it going off at the moment everyone's oven is different it takes off the color this looks beautiful so It's ready to go, but I have an advantage. tip for you, let's just turn off the oven. This is a step I learned at a bakery where if you put it back in with the oven off and just open the lid, this is a curing process so the bread continues to dry.

If you take it out and you will get a very intense crust on your bread, it will be so crispy and so delicious. Let it sit there for 20 minutes, but make sure it's cracked right here, so I've explained the process of baking sourdough at home and tip number 15 is don't be ashamed of making

mistakes

or failing, it really is part of the journey of sourdough because there are a lot of variables when it comes to baking bread at home when it comes to natural fermentation you never really know, and this is a bread that I baked today and to be honest, you know it's good, but it didn't come out perfect , not even me.

I've been baking for years and messed it up, even though that crumble looks great. I strongly recommend not. Cut the bread when it's very hot because it will affect the texture, but sometimes it's just irresistible, so I'm going to give it a try. Just look at that sourdough with fifty percent whole wheat and sesame crust, it's a thing of beauty, there's nothing better right there. this is so sustainable for this bread, sometimes I bake a loaf of sourdough and it's just my lunch or my dinner, you don't need much more than maybe a little olive oil or a little butter, it's hard to explain how good it is It is and how much better this is than the breads you get in bakeries.

Never in a million years do I think you can make artisan style sourdough bread at home, but it is possible and you can do it too, you just know the path to success, so stick around. patient, stay in the game and you will enjoy delicious bread and remember you can download those free sourdough making guides right above, just click on that link it will help you fit sourdough into your own schedule and be sure to follow me on life via Mike G on Instagram to see all the behind the scenes action in this studio and all the fermentation projects I'm working on, so until next time and get cooking.