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Country Sourdough Bread Recipe
This is the original, timeless Country Sourdough bread recipe. It’s a very good and reliable Sourdough Bread recipe you can always fall back to.
- Prep Time: 4-6hrs for your Starter to come to peak
- Fermentation Time: 5hr room temp proof (70F) + 12hr cold proof (36F)
- Cook Time: 20 min with the DO lid on + 20 min with the DO lid off
- Total Time: 22hrs 40 min
- Yield: 1 Sourdough Bread 1x
- Category: Sourdough Baking
- Method: Dutch Oven steam baking
Ingredients
Scale
- 400g bread flour
- 100g whole wheat flour
- 360g water (72% hydration)
- 100g sourdough starter (20% starter)
- 10g salt (2% salt)
Instructions
The sourdough bread baking process can be boiled down into 7 Steps:
Step 1 – FEED STARTER:
- Feed your sourdough starter and use when it’s at peak –basically when it can no longer rise and it starts to crater a little
Step 2 – MIXING:
- In a bowl, mix ingredients together thoroughly until there are no dry clumps
Step 3 – FOLDING DURING ROOM TEMP FERMENTATION:
- For this particular recipe, our room temp (70F) fermentation will be 5hrs long
- during this time window, fold your dough until it starts to resist, and
- then let it rest until you see it start to lose its shape,
- then fold your dough again until it starts to resist,
- then let it rest until you see it start to lose its shape,
- Repeat this until room temp proofing is over (again, 5hrs for this particular recipe)
- you will prob be able to do 3 sets of folding sessions during this time window
Step 4 – SHAPING:
- After 5hrs, your sourdough dough should’ve risen 1.5x its size and should hold its shape after folding.
- Shape your sourdough dough and then place into your proofing basket
Step 5 – COLD PROOFING:
- Cover your dough and cold proof your dough in your fridge at 36F for max 12hrs
Step 6 – SCORING:
- When your oven is done preheating at 485-500F,
- take our your dough out from the fridge,
- flip it onto parchment paper and score it
Step 7 – BAKING:
- Immediately bake in a Dutch Oven with the lid on for 20 min at 485-500F;
- then lower the temp to 450F and bake with the Dutch Oven lid off
- wait 1-2hrs before cutting into it
- enjoy!
Notes
For a more detailed explanation of the 7 Steps of Sourdough Baking, please get the Sourdough For Beginners Course
Thank you for this recipe. I don’t have a dutch oven and wondering what size would be best of the 5 qt is ok or do I need to get 7 ?
A 5qt Dutch oven might be too tight. I like the 7qt Dutch ovens because then you can do all sorts of sourdough bread in there –boules, batards, bagels, hoagies, demi-baguettes. I bought so many Dutch ovens in my quest to find the best one. I have four of them that live in my oven. You can find them here https://howtomakesourdough.com/sourdough-bread-tools/#baking-tools
Where do you get whole wheat bread flour and which one do you use. I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever seen at my local grocery stores. Where can I find it? Thank you
Hmm… well, if you can only find regular Whole Wheat flour, that’s fine. Whole Wheat BREAD flour is flour that’s ground from hard red winter wheat that hasn’t been sifted. This will have more protein/gluten.
Regular or AP Whole Wheat flour is flour that’s ground from soft spring wheat that hasn’t been sifted. This will have less protein/gluten.
The difference between the two is protein content.
If you can’t find it locally, you can find Whole Wheat Bread Flour online here