Bread Flour

tastyhog

Emily_Joy said:

tastyhog said:

Once your starter is established and working to make bread you can just keep 50g in the fridge and take it out to 'feed' it the night before you bake, I 'feed' it 75g of flour & 50g of water, which gives 125g to bake with and then 50g to store again, so you don't waste things by discarding each day, the 'ratios' are off a tad, but it makes zero difference to making a loaf, and it shows me better when it's at its peak for use

That's quite a bit of useful information, thanks! May I ask how much flour/water do you add to 125g of starter for baking and for how long do you leave the loaf to rise?

My basic one is 500g flour, 275g water, 125g starter, 10 - 15g salt depending on your taste.

Its a stiffer dough than a lot of sourdough recipes, so you kneed it like normal yeast bread rather than the weird slap and fold thing. 2 or 3 rounds of kneading with half hour resting in between, then 4 or so hours on the counter (but I've done up to 8 hours) before shaping and overnight in the fridge, for as long as you want to develop flavour, I do about 12 hours, but it could easily stay there for 48 hours and be fine. 
I cook in an upturned glass pyrex casserole dish, ie use the lid to put the bread in and use the main part to cover. 

In to a COLD oven and cook at 230 for 30 minutes, remove the top to brown to your liking

smartbusybee

The easiest way to get a sourdough starter going is to use rye flour. A no-waste method is to start day 1 with a mix 25 g flour to 25 g water and then on the following days 2 to 7 each day add and mix 25 g flour/25 g water. After approximately 6 or 7 days the mixture should be nice and bubbly and be doubling in size. It's then ready to use to bake a sourdough bread. You can use any bread flour to bake the bread (white wheat, wholemeal wheat, spelt etc).