Sourdough Bread Recipe

Sourdough Bread

Ingredients:

• 5/8 Cup water
• 3/4 Teaspoon Dry Active Yeast (Unless you have a well aged starter mine is still very new)
• 1 Cup Sour Dough Starter
• 1 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
• 2 1/4 - 2 1/2 Cups Flour
• Cooking Spray
• Butter

Instructions:

1. Dissolve the yeast into the water in the mixing bowl of a stand-mixer.
2. Using the Dough Hook attachment stir in the sour dough starter.
3. Sift together the flour and salt.
4. Add about 1 1/2 Cups of the sifted salt and flour blend to the bowl and beat with the dough hook on stir for a few minutes. Add the remaining flour blend in small amounts until a the dough pulls into the center and looks pretty smooth and is tacky, but not too sticky.
5. Lightly oil a bowl with the cooking spray and turn the dough into the greased ball. Cover with a warm damp clean kitchen towel and set to rise in a warm place for 1 1/2-2 hours, until about double in size.
6. Turn out risen dough on lightly floured work surface and knead gently for about a minute. Shape into a sandwich loaf or round ball.
7. Butter the loaf pan of your choice, either a traditional loaf or a round pyrex or other small round bake-ware also makes nice loaves.
8. Set the shaped dough into the prepared pans and let rise about 1 1/2 hours, or in the fridge over night.
9. Heat the oven to 450 °F . Once the oven is heated place the loaf in, or take the loaf out of the fridge for 1 hour, before heating the oven and then baking it.
10. Bake the loaf at for 10 minutes then reduce heat to 400 °F and bake for an additional 20-35 minutes, until golden toasted on the top.
11. Remove from oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Allow to cool at least 20 minutes before trying to slice it.

Enjoy!

Notes:

This was a dream come true! Ever since I read The Little House on the Prairie Books and how they made a sourdough starter to make bread before there was a town around them to buy things at. Sorry but I just don't know enough about trying to maintain my starter yet to try and share how to do it, but google is a very helpful place to get started.

Also worth noting, I tried the sourdough bread recipe from Emeril Lagasse and had terrible results. . . Maybe it might work better for you but I pretty much got a brick instead of bread after trying that recipe.

Side note I am unwell, and typing is and working with pictures is pretty unpleasant right now, so sloppy blogging for a few days until I till feel better, then I will fix and touch things up a bit. This bread recipe was just too yummy to lose before I saved it.