Home Bread Baking

by Angela Petty
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My gift to the world is bread. It’s not my only gift, and I don’t claim to be a better baker than anyone else. It’s simply a practice I choose, to fold meaning into my life. To eat well, live well, and share.

For years I’ve been leaning into the same solid loaf. I’ve anguished over sluggish winter rises (with dinnertime deadlines!), mistakenly over fermented hot dough, and learned to tinker with time, temperature, and ingredients to achieve that toasty crust and soft, chewy interior. I’ve come to trust the process of baking bread. 

Why bake bread? Baking warms a winter home. Its sensory steps —stretching wet dough between fingers, watching dough rise, breathing in the smell of crystallizing sugars in a hot oven —calm the nervous system. Its few ingredients are affordable, and the home baker can choose quality, locally grown flour. Lastly, humans have been nourished by naturally leavened bread for 5,000 years!

Traditionally, fermentation was practiced intuitively. Rather than following a strict structure, the rhythm of the dough was deeply intertwined with the rhythms of the baker, the seasons, the home. This remains true today. Sourdough bakers guide a living process. And the microbes at work are unique to their particular environment (even if your starter originally came from elsewhere), producing a bread that is unique to your home, schedule, and taste. All that said, following a recipe (and taking notes) is essential when first learning the craft of bread. 

We’ll start with two recipes in one. The basic outline (unbolded) is for a yeast dough. Consider this recipe training wheels for learning to “read” dough. For sourdough, you’ll follow the same process but with added steps (bolded). And, you’ll need a starter culture. To keep a jar of starter fit and happy, you have to regularly discard some and add more flour and water. I take my starter out of fridge hibernation a couple days before I want to bake to discard/“feed” morning and night until it’s nice and bubbly. But wait, did I say discard? Don’t throw away that precious starter or your levain! I “feed” all of my discard into a separate container then fry it up as a pancakes (with a pinch of salt) to eat for breakfast before I mix my dough.

You will need a tub or bowl (clear allows you to see rise and bubbles), basket (or bowl), tea towel, wooden spoon, bench scrapper (or knife), plastic spatula, and dutch oven (or baking sheet). After you’ve practiced the basics, read on for a more technical recipe in grams, notes, and variations.

Basic No-Knead Yeast Bread and Sourdough

Ingredients
     3 1/2-4 c flour + more for dusting/shaping + more for sourdough levain
     2 t salt
     1 1/2 - 1-3/4 c water
     1/4 t dry active yeast OR 1/2 of levain mixture 

Process
0) Overnight levain: Mix 1 T active sourdough starter with 1/2 c water and 3/4 c flour. Let sit overnight or about 12 hours before mixing dough.

1) In a large bowl, mix ingredients with a wooden spoon, then your hand to form a sticky dough. 

2) Cover and let dough rise until it has doubled in size (12 + hrs). 
a) During rise, stretch and fold the dough over itself in bowl 2 times (1-2 hours after mixing and 3-4 hours after first fold).
3) Shape into a round and let rest on a floured surface about an hour. 
a) Shape again and place the dough upside down in a floured basket (or bowl lined with floured cloth) for a second rise 2-5 hours (or overnight in the fridge)
4) Bake at 450 degrees in a preheated, floured dutch oven (or baking sheet) about 20-30 minutes with the lid on and then 20 minutes with lid off until the crust has browned. 

Beyond basics: Sourdough in Grams

Ingredients
Levain
     1 T sourdough starter
     100 grams flour
     100 grams water
​Dough
     100 g levain
     350-390 g water + 25-35 g water
     500 g flour
     10-14 g salt

Process and technique:

1. Overnight levain: Mix 1 T sourdough starter with 100 g water and 100 g flour. Let sit overnight or about 12 hours before mixing dough.
2. In the morning, your levain should be a little bubbly and smell slightly sweet like an unripe banana. You can test the readiness of your levain by placing it in warm water and seeing if it floats. If it doesn’t, set the levain somewhere warm and wait. I do this test automatically just by adding the levain and water before the rest of the ingredients. 
3. Add water (if you haven’t already in step above), then flour. Mix with a wooden spoon, then your hand to form a sticky dough. Let sit about 45 minutes (I often skip this “autolyse” sit step).
4. Measure salt and additional 25-35 g water into a small cup. Pour over and squeeze/mix into dough. Stretch and fold dough over itself in bowl several times.
5. Cover and let rise until dough has doubled in size (12 + hrs). During rise, stretch and fold the dough over itself in bowl 2 times (1-2 hours after mixing and 3-4 hours after first fold).
6. Dump dough out onto a lightly floured surface (use a plastic spatula to scrape remaining dough out of bowl). Sprinkle flour onto dough, then flip (using bench scrapper or knife to peel dough off surface). 
7. To shape dough, first imagine the doughy mass to be a rectangle. Fold 3 sides to the center, then the 4th side over the whole dough, wrapping it up like a tight burrito. With “seam” on the underside, shape the dough into a round by cupping it in two hands and moving in a circular motion. You want to pull the sides slightly under the round to develop surface tension. If the “skin” of the dough breaks, you’ve gone too far and can stop.  
8. Let round rest on a floured surface about an hour. It will start to relax and “puddle” some. 
9. Flip the dough over (with bench scrapper) and shape again following instructions in step 4.
10. Place the dough upside down in a floured tea towel lined basket (or bowl). Pinch the bottom “seams” of the dough together to maintain tension formed during shaping. Sprinkle dough with flour, then fold over tea towel to cover. 
11. Let rise again for 2-5 hours (or overnight in the fridge). It should look “puddled” and risen when it is ready. 
12. Preheat oven to 500 degrees with dutch oven inside.
13. Remove dutch oven and sprinkle the inside base with flour. Flip dough out of basket and into dutch oven. Using a knife, cut slits in dough to “score” it.  
14. Put lid on dutch oven, place in oven, and turn down temperature to 450 degrees. Bake about 20 minutes with the lid on and then 20 minutes with lid off until the crust has browned.

Notes

• Use any type of (wheat) flour you have or prefer, or a combination of flours. However, different types of flour have different amounts of gluten. Whole wheat has more gluten than white flour and ferments faster. You will also need to add more water if using mostly whole wheat. White flour is easiest when you are first learning. 
• Using warm water will speed up the rise, but hot water will kill microbes. Using more water/a wetter dough will create more of a sponge-like bread (think ciabatta).
• Placing dough in a warm spot (or in cold) will speed up (or slow down) fermentation. Use temperature as a tool to guide your bread schedule.
• Sometimes I have to skip a step, such as missing a fold time or placing dough directly into the basket instead of letting it rest first. I find that following all the steps helps (with things like gluten development), but that I still end up with great bread either way. Experiment and see what works for you. 

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Variations
You can use these same recipes to make olive bread, rosemary bread, seedy bread, a porridge bread, and more. Mix add-ons into the dough in the initial stage, or when you add the salt (in sourdough). Consider the hydration of your added ingredient and how that will effect how much water your dough needs. I like to add cooked grains such as oatmeal, quinoa, or rice to make a porridge bread. You can also experiment with replacing part of the flour in your dough with a non-wheat flour such as rye or corn flour. However, you will need to use majority wheat flour as other flours do not contain gluten protein. The no-knead yeast dough can be used as a pizza dough as well (and theoretically the sourdough dough too). I like to keep a tub of yeast dough in my fridge (for up to a week) and take out a small hunk to make a mini pizza or fresh toaster oven roll. 

Bread is as free and flexible as you make it. You can take a bread project out and about (to perform folds throughout the day), travel with your starter and bread gear, and easily make dough with kids or friends. 

Share, enjoy, and eat well! 

Bibliography
Forkish, Ken. Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza. New York, Ten Speed Press, 2012.
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Hamel, PJ. “No-Knead Crusty White Bread.” King Arthur Baking Company, January 1st, 2016, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/no-knead-crusty-white-bread-recipe. December 24th, 2024.

Robertson, Chad. Tartine Bread. San Francisco, Chronicle Books LLC, 2010.