How to Make Sourdough Bread - By: Tauqeer Hassan

Homemade bread is a total satisfaction for the baker, no matter how much it is baked, the aroma of the freshly baked bread in your kitchen is very attractive. This article will provide you with an easy way to bake sourdough bread.

Sourdough Bread

Sourdough is an ingredient of lactobacillus bacteria. It is prepared from the combination of flour, water and wild yeast. It serves as a leavening agent who is prepared and used since the last many decades by bakers and cooks.

A small amount of dough is used by sourdough bread called a starter instead of raw and natural yeast. The starter contains yeasts and leavening agents that allows the bread to rise. A batch of bread uses batch of starter. Some amount of starter dough is set aside that can be used in other batches of sourdough bread. Because of the invention of prepared yeasts, the presence of sourdough breads in supermarkets and commercial bakeries have become rare. However, sourdough breads are available in some health food shops and specialty shops. It has surely found a place as a home making bread.

Ingredients

The following ingredients are used in making sourdough breads:

- Yeast (supermarket attendants can show you where to find perfect yeasts for sourdough bread)
- Flour (all-purpose flour is not a good choice, instead of that use unleavened high gluten flour)
- Salt
- Warm water

Three phases are involved in making sourdough bread

PHASE 1: STARTER

The starter is a batch of dough which is used for making the bread rise. The following three steps show how to make a batch of starter.

Step 1:
Mix a cup of ¼ teaspoon of yeast, a cup of flour and warm water in a steel bowl.

Step 2:
Now stir the ingredients well and when they are mixed properly, use a square of cling wrap to cover the bowl.

Step 3:
Give it 4 to 6 hours in room temperature to let the starter mixture sit.

PHASE 2: SPONGE

The sponge is the component of sourdough bread that makes up the body of the ingredient. These four steps show how to make the sponge.

Step 1:
Prepare 1 cup of sourdough starter, 2 cups flour and ¾ cup of warm water.

Step 2:
Mix all of the ingredients in a steel bowl.

Step 3:
Use a square cling wrap to cover the sponge mixture and let it stand in room temperature for 6 hours. It can also be left overnight to rise if necessary.

Step 4:
When the size of the dough expands three times more than its original size, this will indicate that the bread sponge is ready.

PHASE 3: BREAD

These four steps can be followed to make sourdough bread:

Step 1:
Mix 1½ cups of flour with salt of 2 level teaspoons. The dry ingredients have to be thoroughly mixed and with accurate measures of distribution to make sure that the salty bits of bread cannot be formed during the baking process.

Step 2:
Now the flour has to be kneaded with the sponge. It is must to have knowledge of kneading a dough. The consistency of kneading should be even.

Step 3:
Put the dough in loaf pans. For preventing the bread from sticking, dust the pans with flour.

Step 4:
The bread can be now baked in an oven at a temperature preheated to 350 degrees.

Serving sourdough bread with a cup of hot coffee and sweets will taste great. The fresh homey taste sourdough bread can be enjoyed in the comforts of your home.

About the Author

You might also be interested in learning how to build a trebuchet and also how to build a volcano.

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