Sour Dough Saturday

For our Super Saturday Cooking School Challenge today, we thought we would make our sour dough round loaves. This slightly crunch bread, with its rich brown crust, is very typical of a San Francisco sourdough loaf, know where I grew up as sheep herders bread. We love this bread for its chewiness and golden crust.

Ingredients:

•  1 1/2 cup  sourdough starter
• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
• 3 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 5 cups Flour

1) In a large bowl add warm water, sprinkle yeast and sugar on top of and let set 2 minutes. 




 

2) Mix in Sour dough Start and let set another 3 minutes.

 3) Add Flour and salt 

 4) then mix until dough form a ball and pulls away from the the side of the bowl, kneading to form a smooth dough.

5) Allow the dough to rise, in a covered bowl, until it's doubled in size, about 90 minutes.







 6) Gently divide the dough in half; it'll deflate somewhat.




 

7) Gently shape the dough into two  oval loaves; or, for longer loaves, two 10" to 11" logs. (we divided ours into 4small round loaves ). Place the loaves on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise until very puffy, about 1 hour. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425°F. Spray the loaves with lukewarm water. Make two fairly deep diagonal slashes in each; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.

8) Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it's a very deep golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool on a rack.