This is dead easy and makes great bread!
Our simple instructions for the Sourdough Yeast Culture can be found at this link.
As to the flour used, this is mainly a white bread recipe, but I often use a combination of 2cups white, 1cup whole wheat, and 1/2 cup flax meal.
Also, ideally one would use “Hard Wheat” flour, but All Purpose will work. For specialty flours, one can often find these in bulk food stores, especially the “health food store” variety, and also in gourmet shops.
The original instructions call for a dutch oven, but I currently don’t have one, so used a ceramic casserole dish. I also used a pyrex casserole, but it broke, so I don’t recommend them for this. The temperature shift between the hot casserole and the room temperature bread is almost certainly the culprit.
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
- 3.5 Cups Flour
- 1.5 Tsp Sea Salt
Wet Ingredients
- 1.5 Cups Warm water
- 1/4 – 1/2 Cup Sourdough Yeast Culture or 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast if you don’t have, or don’t like, sourdough
- 2 Tbsp Cornmeal Please look/ask for Non-GMO
Instructions
- Mix the flour and the salt together
- Mix the yeast starter and the water together
- Mix the wet ingredients slowly into the dry, beginning with a spoon or bread whisk, and ending with your hand.
- Prepare a proofing bowl by greasing it heavily, and then dusting it liberally with cornmeal. Make sure to fully coat the bowl so that the bread will slip out of it easily later.
- Let the bread rise, loosely covered, for: 8 -12 hours if at room temperature 12 – 18 hours if in the refrigerator
- About 30 minutes before you area ready to bake the bread, heat the oven to 500º. It will take that long for the oven to really hit this temperature and you want it hot.
- Prepare your dutch oven, or casserole dish in the same way as the proofing bowl, and put it into the oven to heat up about 10 minutes before you are ready to bake.
- When it is time to bake the bread, take the proofing bowl, roll the bread from it into the dutch oven, and then cover with the lid.
- Bake for 30 minutes, covered, at 500º
- Remove the lid, reduce the heat to 450º and cook for 15 more minutes.
- Remove from the oven and out of the dutch oven quickly.
Notes
