Sour Dough Bread For Lazy People...

 When we were with my sister a few weeks ago the two of us talked about sourdough bread.  She was interested so I brought her some of our starter when we went to visit over Thanksgiving.  Since then I have watched several more videos and now have made a loaf.

The recipe I followed was from a man named Ben Starr.  It worked very well.  You should watch that video.  It will inspire you.  If you live near me and want some of our sourdough, just ask.  And probably come get it...!

To start the bread this week I took the beautiful tulip jar of sourdough starter out of the refrigerator.  Our daughter had sent me the jar in the mail.  I love mail.  I especially like packages.  If I am not expecting a package and one shows up I am particularly happy.  Such was the case with the tulip jar.  When our children were here to celebrate with us in June our daughter helped me with our sourdough starter and put a batch into the tulip jar.  This is what I used this time.  I had taken some out of the 2-quart canning jar to give to my sister who had been reading about sourdough discard and wondered what it was.  In our house we do not discard any sourdough started.  We just use it for something else...like pancakes, tortillas, biscuits.

Ben Starr has you put 4 ounces of sourdough starter in a large bowl straight out of the refrigerator and mix it with 12 ounces water (preferably filtered but tap water works).  After stirring the starter into the water you add 1 pound 4 ounces flour (all purpose or bread flour or up to 8 ounces whole wheat flour -though I am going to try all whole wheat flour some day to see what happens.  Maybe it just won't go so quick and easy.) then add 0.7 ounce kosher salt.  Do use kosher he says.

Stir with a spoon until too stiff to stir then get your clean hands into the bowl and  bring all the ingredients together into a nice uniform dough, which will take you about 15 seconds.

Oil your bowl or the inside of a gallon-sized ziplock back and put the dough ball inside.  If you are using the bowl, put plastic wrap over the top.

Set the dough at room temperature on your counter and wait until it doubles in bulk....overnight, 24 hours, or more depending on the temperature of you house.

This above dough has set out all night and  had well doubled and ready to shape.

This dough has been shaped and is now in the oiled 3.2 quart cast iron dutch oven (it is 9' across and 4" deep to accommodate the cooking bread) where it will sit for 90 minutes until doubled again.

The bread is now out of the oven.  The dutch oven is cold when you put the bread dough into it and the oven is also cold when you put the covered pot in the oven.  Turn on the oven to 425 degrees F, and let cook for 45 minutes.  After 45 minutes remove the cover and let cook an additional 15 minutes.  If it does not look dark enough for you at that point, let it cook longer.  I was happy with how it looked. (The watch was there so I could remember how long it took.  I had put the bread to rise for 90 minutes at 10:30 then went out on a visit and quick stop at the pharmacy all of which took more than the 90 minutes so the bread was more than doubled.  Won't do that next time, but still, I was happy with the bread.)

This is what the first two slices looked like. I thought it looked great and since Dear One had been busy with something away from the kitchen, the loaf of bread had the opportunity to cool completely before it was sliced.  That may have been the first time in fifty years that this was allowed to happen!  It sliced beautifully, in part because last year or the year before Dear One purchased a very good bread knife for our kitchen drawer.  That good knife, and a cool loaf of bread, meant a superior result.

The only possible problem is that Dear One thought the bread did not have any salt in it. It did have salt but because I did not zero the scales after every additional ingredient (which our daughter did when she made the same bread...!) it is possible my math was off.  Next loaf I will zero the scales each time.

The bread has now been completely sliced and put in the freezer to help people's resolve not to the whole loaf within one day.

It is said, but I am not sure of this, that sourdough bread can help lower blood sugar.  I can tell you for a fact that if you eat 6 slices while the bread is still warm and is slathered with butter, it will NOT lower your blood sugar or any other numbers you might be trying to lower...!