Crusty chewy sourdough bread

Molly recently posted a recipe for a no-knead bread that's cooked in a dutch oven.  She mentioned that I've been playing around with sourdough, and I finally feel ready to post about it.  I started with the basic recipe that Molly posted and played around with how much sourdough starter to use, how much water, flour, salt (which inhibits the growth of yeast, so it's not just a matter of taste in bread) etc. The dough needs to be much wetter than normal bread dough to create the humid conditions necessary to achieve the right texture and crust.  That makes it more difficult to handle, so figuring out the right balance of moisture vs. tractability is necessary.  There's also the added variable of the moisture content of the sourdough starter, which, it turns out, affects how sour the starter is (I think it affects the kinds of bacteria that grow).  But, I've got a process that has resulted in the best bread I've ever made three times in a row now.  There are only two problems with this recipe:  1) It requires the oven to be at a hot temp for quite a while, so I'm not sure how much I'll be using it in the summer, though it's not really that different from regular bread recipes, and 2) It only makes one loaf, which seems to disappear in a matter just a day or three in our house.  Luckily, it's really, really easy to make and requires very little active time commitment.

I start with the bread recipe.  The directions for the sourdough starter are below.

12 oz sourdough starter
10 oz bread flour + whole wheat flour.  I confess I like all white bread, but Aleks likes it with some whole wheat flour.  Today I used 2 oz whole wheat and 8 oz white bread flour, and it was pretty good.)
8 oz water
2 t salt
1/8 t. bakers yeast (I'm playing around to see how little of this I can use and still get the kind of rise I like in my bread)

Mix everything together in a bowl, cover the bowl with some plastic wrap, and then ignore it for anywhere from 5-12+ hours.  If it's warm in your kitchen and you want to let the dough rise overnight, just put it in your fridge after you've given it a few hours to get working, then take it out again the next morning.  To speed up the rewarming process the next day, you can put the bowl of dough in a larger bowl with warm water in it.

When you're ready to set the dough for it's second rise spread a good handful of flour on the counter, then scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the flour.  Sprinkle a bit more flour on top of the dough, then lift one end of the dough, stretch it out a bit, then fold it over the rest of the dough.  Do this a few times, slightly stretching andfolding back over the dough.  You should end up with a ball of dough.  Find a bowl whose top is about the same size as the bottom of your dutch oven.  Line it with plastic wrap and give it a good coat of oil (I like to use a spray oil, like PAM).  Put the dough in, with the seam side up.  Let it rise for a while, until is 2-3 times the original size.

Put your dutch oven (I think mine is an 8" dutch oven), with the lid on, in the oven and preheat to 425-450.  Once it's preheated, remove the dutch oven, sprinkle a little cornmeal or flour on the bottom, then gently dump your dough in, trying not to deflate it very much.  Put the lid back on the dutch oven and return to the oven.  Bake for 30 min.  Remove the lid of the dutch oven and bake for another 20 min.  The internal temp of the bread should be about 110 degrees, and the top should be nice and golden brown.  Let the bread cool for a while.  I've found this is more important with this recipe than normal.  Enjoy!

Sourdough starter - I took my recipe directly from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  Mine took an extra day or two to really get going, which isn't unusual at this time of year.  

Day 1: Mix together 1 c (4.5 oz) dark rye flour + 1/2 c. unsweetened pineapple juice (the pineapple juice on the first two days is supposed to help suppress the growth of a bad bacteria that apparently ruins about 40% of homemade starters.  Put in a plastic, glass, or ceramic bowl/measuring cup, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit out for 24 hr.

Day 2: To your day 1 ingredients, add 1/2 c (2.25 oz) bread flour + 1/4 unsweetened pineapple juice.  Mix, then cover with plastic wrap and let sit out for 24 hr.

Day 3: Discard half the starter, then mix in with the remainder 1 c (4.5 oz) bread flour + 1/2 c. water.  Cover and let sit out for 24 hr.

Day 4: The sponge should have doubled in size.  If not, let it sit for another day.  When it's ready, discard half, then mix in 1 c flour + 1/2 c water.  Cover and let ferment until it doubles in size and is spongy (4-24 hours, depending on the room temp and how "started" your starter is".  

Next day:  Prepare the Starter, by adding 1 c of the seed starter from day 4 + 16 oz bread flour + 2 c (16 oz) water.  Cover, and let ferment at room temp until bubbly and doubled in size, then transfer to the refrigerator.  

Feeding the starter:  Every 3-4 days you need to at least double the starter by adding equal amounts by weight of flour and water.  So, if you have 7 oz of starter, add 3.5 oz water and 3.5 oz flour.  Mix together, let sit at room temp for 4-6 hours until bubbly, then store in the refrigerator.  In general, feed the starter one day before making bread.  

I don't like the idea of throwing away a lot of starter, so I try to keep just a small amount going.  Since I usually use about 12 oz to make bread, I'll have about 15 oz of starter.  When I remove the 12 oz for bread, I then add maybe 2 oz flour + 2 oz water.  Then the day before I make bread again, I'll feed it again, adding 4 oz flour + 4 oz water to get me back up to 15 oz, from which I'll use 12 for bread dough the next day.  This is a nice cycle that has me making bread every 4-5 days.  

Tips: 1) you can triple or quadruple the starter when you feed it if you're going to need more of it.

2) Yeast make the starter and your bread bubbly.  Byproducts of bacterial growth make it sour.  Yeast grows better at room temp or warmer.  Bacteria will grow at cooler temps like in the fridge, but they compete with the yeast for resources to grow.  So, leaving the starter in the fridge will allow more bacteria to grow, letting your starter get more sour.

3) I was disappointed at first with the lack of sour flavor in my bread.  I googled it and read that outside of San Francisco, a lot of bakeries add acids directly to their doughs to mimic the flavor of sourdough, and the result is dough that is much more sour than occurs naturally.  

4) You can change the proportions of flour to water that you use to feed your starter to make a less-wet starter.  I tried this at first, thinking it would be easier to substitute the starter into other bread recipes.  I went back to the wetter version when I was disappointed at how un-sour my bread was turning out.  The water content of the starter affects what bacteria grow, and so affects the flavor.  I've been getting better results with the wetter starter.

5) I think starters also become more sour with time, which could also explain my better results recently.  I've been running my starter for about 2 months now, and the flavor of the bread I've been getting has been great!  No super sour, but definitely more sour than regular bread, and just a ton of flavor in general.