Back when I was earning my undergraduate dietetics degree at Michigan State, I had to take a food/cooking lab where we met twice per week. Each week we always focused on a different theme (meats, veggies, starches, etc.) and then cooked a bunch of food in that category, and during our bread week, we made a ton of different recipes using a homemade sourdough starter. I was always fascinated with our sourdough starter we used and wanted to make my own, however I was just so busy with my studies that I never got around to it. That is, until two years later when I finally decided to make my own sourdough starter!
During the process of “growing” my starter (getting it fermented enough to use), I had to feed it some flour and water every day to keep it alive. I always joked that it was like taking care of a person or a pet, so I decided to treat my starter like a person and give it a name: Herman. Herman sat on my kitchen counter for a week, which was a reminder for me to feed him, and then after he was all big and full of bubbles (meaning he was ready to be used), I took him downstairs to my kitchen in our basement to keep him from growing too big. Now, Herman sits in his new home (my basement fridge) 24/7, and I only “feed” him once per week to keep him alive.
So far, I’ve loved having my own sourdough starter, and I’ve been making all kinds of recipes with it – sandwich bread, crusty loaf breads, English muffins, pretzels, dinner rolls, and many, many more. This sandwich bread was actually the very first recipe I made using my sourdough starter, and it is still one of my family’s favorite recipes to this day.
This recipe has a lot of steps to it and involves starting it the night before you want to make it, but all of the steps are very simply, and in the end, all of the hard work is 100% worth it! Like I mentioned, you have to start the day before you want to make the bread and mix together what’s called the “levain”. This levain is a mixture of just a few ingredients and essentially is a pre-fermentation step: it allows the dough to start fermenting and leavening to get more air into it (which then makes fluffier bread!). I usually mix up the levain right before I’m about to go to bed, and then by the next morning, I’m ready to add the rest of the ingredients to make the bread dough.
The next day when you’re ready to bake the bread, all you have to do is add the remaining ingredients to the levain, use a little elbow grease, and mix it all up. I like to add everything to a big bowl, mix it up slightly in the bowl, and then I dump it out onto my counter and finish kneading it by hand. After it’s all said and done, here is what the final dough should look like:
Give it one last final knead, stick it back in the bowl, and then leave it alone for about an hour and let it rise and do its thing!
After it has nearly doubled in size, take off the cloth and take the dough mound out of the bowl it’s in. Next, you’ll want to punch it down, knead it a few more times, and then divide it into two equal dough mounds. Personally, I like to add my dough to oiled or greased bread pans, because this helps me better shape the bread so that it actually looks like a loaf of bread. However, there’s no need for fancy equipment or bread pans – feel free to shape your dough by hand into a loaf shape (or even a round shape!) and simply place it on an oiled cookie sheet!
Now it’s time to let it rise some more. I know, I know…. the waiting is no fun, but trust me, it will pay off in the end! All of this waiting time is allowing the bread to work its magic so that the end result will be a nice and crusty bread with a soft and fluffy inside.
Once the dough has doubled in size again, it’s ready to go into the oven! And oh my goodness, I just have to say that it smells absolutely heavenly while it is baking! My whole kitchen (and house) always smells of freshly-baked bread for the rest of the day, and that is one smell I will never get tired of.
As much as you’ll want to dig right into these fresh-out-of-the-oven loaves, you still need to let them cool for a little so that you can cut into each loaf without it tearing apart. Plus, you don’t want to burn your tongue, now do you? Yes, it’s hard to wait that long, but I promise the bread will still be fantastic even after letting it sit for 10-15 minutes!
If you managed to wait long enough to slice it up, good for you – I know it can be hard when all you want to do is rip a big chunk right off and stick it in your mouth! When slicing my bread, I always like to slice the whole thing up at one time. This saves me the trouble of having to get a knife out each and every time I’m in the mood for some bread!
And since this recipes makes two fairly large loaves of bread, I generally like to freeze the second one so it doesn’t go stale before I get a chance to eat it. I typically slice up the bread, let the bread cool completely (a few hours), wrap it up nice and tight in a few layers of plastic wrap, and then stick it right into my freezer. This way, it’ll still taste nice and fresh when I pull it out and defrost it at a later time.
Bread is one of those foods that I would never get sick of eating, and I think that fresh bread is one of life’s greatest joys. Therefore, I could eat this whole loaf plain and by itself if you let me! However, it also makes delicious sandwiches and goes along perfectly with a big bowl of soup or stew.
One of the good things about homemade bread is that it doesn’t contain any preservatives or funky ingredients to make it last longer. The downside of this, though, is that the bread doesn’t stay super fresh for all that long – it can start to stale or grow mold if you don’t eat it quickly enough. However, no need to gobble this whole loaf down in one day in fear that it’ll go bad (unless you want to, that is) – It’ll actually stay fresh for much longer than you’d expect. Even by the 3rd day, I’ve noticed that it still tastes incredibly fresh. By the 4th or 5th day it might start to lose its freshness, but it’s still perfectly okay to eat! In fact, if I still have bread leftover by the 4th or 5th day (which is a rare occurrence), then I like to pop it in my toaster oven or use it to make French Toast. It’s the perfect way to use up the last of it without letting it go to waste!
If you’ve never made your own bread before, then what are you waiting for? It just doesn’t compare to store-bought bread (it’s much better), and it’s actually quite simpler than you think. If you’re really feeling ambitious, then I recommend creating your own sourdough starter! It takes less than 5 minutes of your time every day, and in the end, you’ll be halfway to making your own incredibly delicious and tangy sourdough bread! There are tons of different sourdough recipes floating around on the Internet or in cookbooks, but if you’re looking for something simple and easy to understand, I would recommend this recipe here. It’s the one I used to create Herman (my starter), and I’ve been continuing to use it without any issues!
Good luck in all of your bread-baking adventures!
- LEVAIN:
- 1 cup + 1 TBSP all-purpose flour
- ½ cup + 1 TBSP cool water (60-70 degrees F)
- 3 TBSP ripe sourdough starter
- DOUGH:
- 5 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 6 TBSP non-fat dry milk
- 3 TBSP sugar
- 2 tsp. salt
- 3 tsp. active dry yeast
- 3 TBSP unsalted butter, melted
- 1 ½ cups slightly warm water (70-80 degrees F)
- All of the levain
- Mix all of the levain ingredients in a glass bowl with extra space to grow (it will double in size).
- Cover the container with a lid and leave overnight or for at least 12 hours.
- After at least 12 hours, get started making the dough: mix all of the ingredients together and knead together for a few minutes. If it is too hard to mix in the bowl, flour a surface, pour the contents onto the counter, and knead until dough is elastic and stretchy.
- If mixture seems too dry, add a small amount of water (1 teaspoon at a time) and continue to knead until mixture is smooth and elastic. If mixture is too sticky and wet, add more flour until it no longer sticks.
- Sightly grease a large glass bowl with oil. Shape the dough into one giant ball and place in the bowl.
- Cover loosely with a cloth and let sit for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size (I usually wait 1½ hours)
- After 2 hours (or after dough has doubled in size), punch down the ball and knead it a few more times. Divide the dough into two equal rolls.
- Place each half into a lightly greased (8 ½ x 4”) bread pan (or shape into a loaf shape and place on a greased cookie sheet). Cover and let sit for another 1-2 hours (or until dough has doubled in size).
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 F and remove the middle rack from the oven.
- Bake the loaves for 30-35 minutes, or until the tops are browned. Rotate the breads halfway through baking so that they bake evenly.
- Remove the loaves from the oven and allow them to cool for 10 minutes in their pan/on the sheet. After, remove from the pans/cookie sheet and place onto a cooling rack to finish cooling.
- After about 10 minutes, you will be okay to cut into the bread and slice it. If it appears to be falling apart or tearing, let it cool longer.
