Merfeld-Jewell Recipes

Sourdough Bread in the style of Andrew

A combination of the recipe from my father and the NYT sourdough recipe.

It's also important to state that most of these steps are quite flexible. If you're running out of time or don't have time to do so many stretch and folds, do less, and your bread will still turn out. This is just the master list of what I've found to be best practices resulting in the most consistent and beautiful loaves.

Ingredients

For Initial Feed

For Bread

Instructions

Feeding

  1. Afternoon before take starter from fridge to activate. It should start to bubble after a few hours.
  2. Just before bed, weigh the jar + starter; discard down to about 45g starter (440g including gifted jar WITHOUT LID). You can keep discard in the fridge for other purposes. Then add 80g of any kind of flour and 80g of water; mix vigorously.
  3. Let sit overnight in a warm place. It should approximately double, but if it's a little less, that's fine.
    • The key thing in this case is actually to let it get to a state known as "ripe". You can also test the starter by taking a bit of the starter and putting it in a bowl of water to see if it will float. However, if the starter has doubled, you don't need to worry--it'll be fine, and when you add the non-flour ingredients together, you'll see the starter float at that time, proving that it's ready.

Making Bread Dough

Begin the bread dough process the next morning (10-12 hr after feeding the starter).

  1. Check the current temperature in your proofing space. If it's too cold for a patio or a utility closet, you'll want to turn on the oven light to let the oven preheat to the light's hold temperature (usually just barely above room temp, 80-90°).
  2. Mix water, salt and starter.
    • Here's where you'll notice that the starter floats. Some smaller bits won't, and that's fine, since they won't have as much air trapped in them.
  3. Add all flours and mix to a very sticky dough.
    • Try to pull most stuck bits off the bowl at this time, since they'll dry in the next steps and become much harder to clean.
  4. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and let it sit in warm place.
    • If it's warm out, this might just be your kitchen or a porch. If not, use the oven. Be careful that no one else starts the oven actually preheating, or you'll be a very unhappy camper!
  5. Set timers for 30-45 min for a while. When the timer goes off, do 3-4 stretch and folds with wet hands. This means you must reach below the dough with very wetted hands and pull the dough out into a long ribbon (1-1.5ft or so), then fold in half. On the first fold, you'll be able to easily stretch it; by the third or fourth stretch in a set, it'll be a quite tight dough and it's fine to only stretch it a little. You may have to grip the bottom of the dough to hold it in place to be able to stretch it effectively.
    • The more of these I do, the better the bread seems to come out, at least in my mind. I try to make sure I do at least 3-4 total repetitions of this before leaving the dough longer (at least 1-2 hours) between interruptions to let it develop into a very light and airy dough.
  6. In between, return to a warm place and let the dough continue to ferment.
  7. After you're done stretch and folding, leave the dough to rise for a balance of at minimum 6hr or so; so if you did 4 stretch and folds at 30-min increments, leave the dough for at least another 4 hours to continue to rise.
    • This is a minimum; I've yet to find an amount where it feels like too much. Today, I let the dough rise until around 4pm after starting it at 8am (approx 8hr total bulk ferment time). It wasn't very warm when the dough started fermenting, so it took at least that long until I was confident it was ready. To determine readiness, the dough should eventually show a variety of bubbles on its surface and generally look quite airy.
  8. Generously flour a surface in your kitchen with rice flour.
  9. Turn the dough out onto the floured surface with floured hands or a bench scraper. It will stick to the bowl, and that's ok. Allow the weight of the dough itself to do most of the work pulling away from the bowl.
    • If making a double batch, now is a good time to divide in half to shift to making individual loaves.
  10. Lifting the edges of the dough from the surface, build tension in the bottom surface of the dough until the floured parts of the dough meet in a seam. The parts that haven't touched the floured work surface should be very stick and readily stick to each other.
  11. In one quick motion, flip the dough ball onto another floured surface (seam side should be down). Cover with the damp towel and allow to rest 15-20min.
    • If you're in a hurry, instead just lift the ball directly into a floured pan; leave it at least 15min to seal its seam (up to 1hr) and then cover and place in fridge. Skip to step ## to bake.
  12. Prep the baskets for cold proofing. I line with a cotton liner, then sprinkle the liner with rice flour to prevent sticking.
  13. Uncover the dough and dust with rice flour. Flip the dough ball seam-side up, and stretch into a square shape.
  14. Fold in thirds, left side in then right side over the left, and finally roll up into a "bulky spiral," or as I like to call it, a tidy blob.
  15. Let the dough sit for a minute or two to seal up a bit, then transfer into the prepared basket, seam-side up.
  16. Dust with rice flour.
  17. Cover with a damp towel and let sit for ~1hr.
  18. Finally, transfer to refridgerator to allow cold proof process to begin.

Baking the Bread

Begin the bread baking process 1-2 days after completing the dough. The longer you wait to bake after creating the dough, the sour-er the dough will be. I like to wait around 2 days and bake in the early morning to avoid the worst heat of the day.

  1. Place dutch oven in the oven while cold.
  2. Set the oven to preheat to 450° (with the empty dutch oven inside)
  3. When preheated, sprinkle rice flour on a small silicone baking mat. Turn the chilled dough out onto the baking mat, and sprinkle the dough with additional rice flour.
  4. Using a razor blade, slice a deep gash along one side to allow expansion.
    • You may also decorate with smaller gashes to give the loaf an artisan look! Go crazy with it.
  5. Lift the baking mat into the hot dutch oven (very carefully)!
  6. Toss an ice cube into the dutch oven, slipping it underneath the baking mat if possible.
  7. Cover, and return to oven. Bake 22min.
  8. Remove lid, then bake another 20min (or until it looks golden brown everywhere and slightly burnt/crispy on the exposed edges).
  9. Remove from oven. Allow bread to cool at least 2hr prior to slicing, and at least 6hr (in a normally moist room) before putting into a plastic bag, or the crispy crust will be compromised. Enjoy!