Community Pick
Homemade Sourdough Bread
photo by SlopSlinger
- Ready In:
- 3hrs 5mins
- Ingredients:
- 8
- Yields:
-
2 loaves
ingredients
- 1 cup sourdough starter
- 6 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 (1/4 ounce) package active dry yeast
- 1 1⁄2 cups water
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon salt
- cornmeal
directions
- Bring sourdough starter to room temperature.
- In a large mixing bowl combine 2-1/2 cups of the flour and the yeast; set aside.
- In a saucepan heat and stir water, sugar, butter, and salt just until warm (120-130 deg.) and butter almost melts.
- Add to flour mixture.
- Add sourdough starter.
- Beat with until mixed and smooth, scraping bowl.
- Stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can.
- On a lightly floured surface knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately stiff dough that is smooth and elastic.
- Shape into a ball.
- Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, turning once to grease surface.
- Cover and let rise until doubled.
- Punch dough down.
- Turn out on a lightly floured surface.
- Divide in half.
- Cover and let rise for 10 minutes.
- Lightly grease a large baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal.
- Shape each half of the dough into a ball, place on baking sheet, flatten to about a 6-inch circle.
- With a sharp knife make crisscross slashes, 1/4 inch deep, on the top of the loaves.
- Cover and let rise 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 375-deg.
- After heated place bread in oven and steam.
- Bake in oven for 30-35 minutes, or till bread tests done.
- Cool on a wire rack.
Questions & Replies
Got a question?
Share it with the community!
Reviews
-
This recipe produced a really nice dough. It rose well and browned beautifully in the oven. After all the effort I have to admit I was hoping for a more sour taste, it smelled more like sourdough than tasted like it. Still a delicious bread. My toddler and I ate three pieces between us as soon as it was cool enough to chew! Side note: I had to google what you might mean by steaming, a foreign concept to me (worked well.) Maybe you could elaborate in the instructions :)
-
I get good consistent results with this recipe each time I bake this bread. And now that I have a new lamme to replace my old one that broke I'm even happier to use this recipe. I have a very, very old SF starter that has a really sour tangy flavor to it that everyone loves. I'll admit I've been baking for over 46 years, thousands of loaves of bread but in order to get a good result you have to have a solid recipe to start with. I use this recipe and make changes in the flavor with additions of my own but it is a good basic SD recipe. Thanks for posting!
-
A very nice Bread! Like all bread recipes, I feel you need to play with it a few times to see what works best for you. In my case, I added about 1/2 teaspoon yeast, because my starter wasn.t doing the job well enough. That did the trick though. I also had to play with flour quantities a bit to see what would get me the best consistency. This dough is silky smooth to the touch, and the bread comes out great, with a nice crackly crust, and makes great sandwiches and toast! Give it a try , maybe 2 tries. Definitely worth the effort!
-
Excellent!! It is so much quicker than traditional sourdough. I was crispy on the outside and very tender inside. I used 1 cup of buttermilk and 1/2 cup water. It was not as sour as traditional sourdough but still somewhat sour. I have trouble getting my bread to rise and make a nice round loaf. One loaf I did in the loaf pan and the other on a clay sheet. The loaf was absolutely perfect and the round was flat. When it rose it spread width wise instead of up. Not sure how to fix that but I know it was not the recipe because the other loaf was perfect.
-
This is bar none the best bread recipe I have tried, and I've been baking bread since I was a teen. The bread had not only awesome flavor, but great texture also. I made loaves of bread, as well as hamburger and brat buns. The bread stays soft, so a loaf is still good for sandwiches 3 & 4 days later. It has enough texture to hold up to brat and italian sausage toppings.<br/>I have experimented with using 1/4 C vital wheat gluten, which I like. I have also used up to 3/4 C fresh ground wheat flour, which also works fine in this recipe. I plan to up the wheat flour to see where I get that balance of soft, yet still has nutrition value.
see 19 more reviews
Tweaks
-
I've been looking for a soft sourdough recipe like many restaurants serve, rather than then standard crusty artesian that I usually make. Even though this wasn't very sour, I'll be making it again because we liked it so much. Next time I will use regular butter instead of the unsalted that I tried. I used a food processor and only switched to hand kneading as I added flour and the mixer slowed down. Next time I'm going to try adding some buttermilk to the water for additional tang. Also, underneath I like to use semolina instead of cornmeal.
RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
Pa. Hiker
Plum, Pa
I'm a father of three older children (college age), an avid hiker who likes to actually cook on hikes instead of eating packaged meals, a woodworker, gardener, photographer. I design websites, specializing in sites for Non-Profit groups.