Prologue

I use King Arthur branded flour for any flour used. It hasn’t let me down yet and works beautifully.

If you want to start your own sourdough starter from scratch, I highly recommend you follow this Sourdough Starter guide. Otherwise, you can buy and revive sourdough starter from King Arthur.

The starter below is at a 1:1:1 ratio by weight of starter:water:flour. I feed my starter this All Purpose Flour. I use this Sourdough Crock, it weighs 425g.

If you want a no knead version, I recommend using this recipe here.

Standard Loaf

Ingredients

Steps

1. Heat water until it is lukewarm in microwave and pour into stand mixer’s mixing bowl.

2. Dissolve salt into water in the mixing bowl.

3. Dissolve sourdough starter into water in the mixing bowl. Depending on hydration of your starter, using the stand mixer’s whisk attachment makes this very easy.

4. Dump all of the flour into the mixing bowl. Attach dough hook.

5. On setting 2-4 out of 10, with dough hook, knead dough for about 8 minutes. The dough should be cleaned off of the sides of the mixing bowl by the end. ¹

6. Optional: Set mixer speed to 1, add some olive oil, and coat the kneaded dough.

7. Shape it into a loaf if desired², then place into loaf pan. Push it down to fill the bottom of pan if needed.

8. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 4-6 hours³ or until roughly doubled in size. It should be roughly to top of pan. Preheat oven to 500ºF near end of rise.

9. Lower heat to 375ºF and bake for 40 minutes. Remove when loaf is golden brown and internal bread temperature is at least 190ºF.

Cinnamon Raisin Loaf Variation

Ingredients

Before Step 1

Soak raisins in water (cold, room temp, dealer’s choice) for 30 minutes. Save the water from the raisin soaking to use as part of the water for dissolving the salt and starter. If you didn’t use the required amount of water to soak the raisins, just add more until you reach the required amount for this step ⁴.

Shaping Instructions

1. Using olive oil, oil a walled baking sheet (and your hands).

2. Flatten out the dough (kind of like a rectangular pizza) and evenly spread/sprinkle the raisins and cinnamon across the whole flattened dough.

3. Grab one end and start rolling it up on itself. This is how we get our swirl so don’t be shy about rolling it, roll it like you would a sleeping bag. Once rolled into a log, pinch down the seam and tuck/fold over the ends so raisins won’t spill out, then fit the log seam down in the loaf pan ⁴.

French Bread Loaf Variation

Original recipe

Ingredients

Steps

1. In stand mixer bowl, combine the water, olive oil, salt and sugar and mix until salt and sugar are dissolved.
2. Add the starter and dissolve.
3. Add bread flour and mix by hand until rough dough.
4. Rest for 1 hour in stand mixer bowl
5. Knead in stand mixer for about 4 minutes on speed 2.
6. Rest for 1 - 1.5 hours or overnight in refrigerator.
7. Remove from refrigerator, if needed.
8. Shape the dough into a loaf (coat your hands in olive oil) and place in loaf pan.
9. Rise in pan for 1.5 hours or until loaf is roughly doubled in size.
10. Preheat oven for 30 minutes at 400ºF.
11. Lower heat to 375ºF and bake for 40 minutes. Remove when loaf is golden brown and internal bread temperature is at least 190ºF.