The perfect sourdough recipe has been my goal for a few years. Between battling with varying ambient temperatures, trying to find a culture that ferments consistently and getting my schedule dialed in, there’s a lot to take into account. I’m getting pretty close with this spelt and rye flour recipe though!
Schedule: I based this loaf off of my sourdough schedule.
Since this is a 100% naturally leavened bread, I created a levain with my sourdough starter that was last fed 12 hours prior. This levain provides enough for 2 loaves of bread.
30 minutes before mixing the salt into the dough, I performed an autolyse by mixing the water, levain and flour together.
Ingredients:
Levain
Started at 8:30am with the following ingredients. Mix everything together and loosely cover and let it ferment for about 8 hours.
- 22g unfed sourdough starter (last feeding was 12 hours prior)
- 108g filtered water @ 85-90’F
- 86g Bob’s Red Mill bread flour
- 22g King Arthur whole wheat flour
Dough
- 800g Bob’s Red Mill bread flour
- 46g Bob’s Red Mill spelt flour
- 46g Bob’s Red Mill dark rye flour
- 572g filtered water @ 90-95’F
- 216g levain
- 22g sea salt
Method:
After mixing the dough, I performed 4 stretch and folds within the first 4 hours. The dough fermented at room temperature (around 73’F) overnight. After the overnight fermentation I divided the dough and shaped them before proofing in bannetons for about 2 hours.
I baked the loaves in a preheated dutch oven at 450’F for 38 minutes covered, then removed the lid of the dutch oven and baked for an additional 17 minutes.
Result:
This was only the second time I’ve used this sourdough culture to ferment my dough and I think it’s working very well. It’s an extremely fast and efficient fermenter and I might have to cut back bulk fermentation time even more.
The flavor of this bread is very nice. The sourness isn’t overpowering and the spelt/rye flours give it a nice texture and complexity.
I should have scored the bread but instead let it naturally vent. One loaf (the one pictured in this post) formed a really nice natural ear. I feel like with some proper venting it would have risen even better though.
My Baking Notes
- Ambient Temperature: 75’F
- Started autolyse @ 5:00pm
- Water temp: 90’F
- Dough was 83’F at autolyse
- Mixed @ 5:30pm
- Dough was 81’F after mixing
- 4 stretch and folds in first 4 hours
- Started proof @ 6:15am
- Preheated oven @ 7:45am
- Into oven @ 8:35am
