I felt like I had been neglecting my sourdough starter in the back of the fridge so I decided to feed it over a few days and then use it for some bread. I had been missing that good sour twang in my recent loaves and this one gave me what the other loaves had been lacking.

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 8:25am 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
• 108g bread flour

Dough

• 800g bread flour
• 90g Bob’s Red Mill spelt flour
• 680g filtered water @ 90-95’F
• 216g levain
• 22g sea salt

Method:

After mixing the dough, I performed 3 stretch and folds within the first 3 hours. The dough fermented at room temperature (around 70’F) overnight. After the overnight fermentation I divided the dough and shaped them before proofing in bannetons for about 2 hours. The smaller loaf was fully proofed about an hour before the larger loaf.

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 16 minutes.

Result:

I’m really loving this sourdough culture. It performs so much better than my older whole wheat starter ever did. The sour flavors it produces are very clean and it rises the bread extremely well.

Both loaves rose very well and ended up with a really nice crumb and crust. When I toasted a slice, the sour aroma really fills the kitchen.

My Baking Notes

• Ambient Temperature @ levain start: 67’F
• Levain start: 8:25am
• Ambient Temperature @ autolyse: 74’F
• Started autolyse @ 5:50pm
• Water temp: 92’F
• Dough was 86’F at autolyse
• Mixed @ 6:25pm
• Dough was 81’F after mixing
• 3 stretch and folds in first 3 hours
• Started proof @ 6:35am
• Preheated oven @ 8:15am
• Small loaf into oven @ 8:50am
• Large loaf into oven @ 9:45am