Using new folding techniques and new ingredients, Chef John delivers a delicious new take on a classic baked bread recipe! In this video, Chef John shows you how to make his new and improved sourdough bread. Featuring what Chef John calls the ideal crumb structure and a close to perfect crust, his new sourdough uses wheat flour to create a comforting and indescribably decadent loaf of homemade bread.
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00:00 Hello, this is Chef John from FoodWishes.com with new and improved sourdough bread.
00:08 That's right, I've been working on this for over a year and I'm very excited to share
00:12 what I think is a more delicious loaf, a more nutritious loaf, and thanks to the new folding
00:17 techniques I'm going to show you, features what I think is the ideal crumb structure.
00:22 Not to mention a gorgeous, crispy, and pretty much perfect crust.
00:26 So with that, let's go ahead and get started.
00:28 Or should I say, "startered"?
00:30 Since I'm going to start this bread with 100 grams of sourdough starter, and once we zero
00:34 the scale out, I'm going to add about 15 grams of bread flour, about 15 grams of whole wheat
00:38 flour, and then about 5 grams of rye flour, for a total of 35 grams of flour.
00:44 And once those are in, we will zero the scale again, and we'll add 35 grams of cold, fresh
00:49 water.
00:50 And by the way, if your scale happens to jump up a gram, do not try to remove a gram of
00:54 water.
00:55 Okay, we want to be precise, but not insanely so.
00:59 And then what we'll do is take a spoon and give this a mix to create what we call in
01:03 the bread business, a "lavain."
01:06 And by the way, if you don't have any sourdough starter, just go back and watch our last sourdough
01:09 video where we show you how to make it.
01:12 Or just ask around with friends or family, or one of those neighbor apps, and believe
01:15 me, someone will be happy to give you 3 or 4 tablespoons to start with.
01:19 And then what we'll do is cover that loosely with the lid, and then we'll let it sit out
01:23 at room temp for about 5 hours, or until it about doubles in size, and is beautifully
01:28 bubbly and very active.
01:30 And hopefully it's going to look something like this.
01:33 But, and this is very important, about 3 hours into the lavain process, okay about 2 hours
01:38 before it's going to be ready, we're going to do a step called autolyse, which is simply
01:43 mixing our flour and water together, and letting it sit for a few hours before we start our
01:47 dough.
01:48 And I'm going to start with 135 grams of wheat flour, and then 365 grams of bread flour,
01:55 for a total of 500 grams exactly, give or take a gram.
01:59 And then I'm not sure why, but I like to give this a mix before I add the water, or you
02:03 probably don't have to, but I am going to make a well in the center anyway.
02:07 And it is fun to stir things, but either way we will zero out our scale, and then add exactly
02:12 425 grams of cold fresh water, at which point we'll take our spoon and give this a mix until
02:19 everything is combined.
02:21 And by doing this a couple hours before you add the lavain, we give that flour time to
02:25 hydrate, especially the wheat flour, which takes longer.
02:28 And the result is a dough that's easier to work with, plus according to people that know
02:32 these things, it's going to taste better and look better.
02:36 And then once that's mixed, we'll take a flexible plastic bench scraper, okay the one with the
02:40 rounded edge, which we'll use when we're working in the bowl, and we'll clean off our spoon
02:44 and scrape down the sides.
02:46 And then later as you'll see, we'll need the stiffer metal flat bench scraper, which we'll
02:50 use when we're folding the dough on the counter.
02:53 And once we have that cleaned up, we'll cover it, and let it sit like I said for two hours,
02:57 after which it's pretty much going to look exactly the same, except it will kind of have
03:01 slumped down in the bowl.
03:02 And at this point we can go ahead and now grab our fully fermented lavain, and I'm going
03:06 to give that a stir so you can see how beautifully bubbly and gassy it is.
03:10 And by the way, if your lavain looks like this, and it's ready to use, but your autolyse
03:14 has not gone two hours yet, it doesn't matter, just start making bread.
03:18 Okay, even an hour of autolyse is fine.
03:20 And what we'll do is place that on the scale and zero it out, and then add exactly 70 grams
03:26 of our lavain, which by the way is the exact weight of the flour and water we added to
03:30 our starter, which means we'll have 100 grams left, which we'll pop in the fridge, and we'll
03:35 use that to make the next batch.
03:37 Oh yeah, it's the perfect system.
03:40 And then what we'll do is move the scale and grab a cup of water for our fingers, and we
03:44 will also at this point add our salt around the outside, around the outside, around the
03:48 outside, since I think it's bad luck to add the salt right on top of the lavain.
03:53 And then what we'll do is wet our fingers and go around folding the dough like this,
03:58 in an attempt to mix that salt and lavain in nice and evenly.
04:01 Oh, and in case you're wondering, that was 11 grams of kosher salt.
04:05 And don't worry, I'm going to list all the exact weights in the description.
04:08 But anyway, we'll mix everything together, wetting our fingers when needed.
04:13 And also, I generally like to put a towel under the bowl, just so we don't have two
04:16 hard things banging into each other.
04:19 And thanks to that autolyse step, this dough is already going to be fairly elastic, which
04:24 means we're off to a great start.
04:26 And after a couple minutes of doing what you just saw me doing, we should be able to form
04:30 this into a relatively uniform ball of dough.
04:33 And once that's been accomplished, we will cover it, and we will set our timer for exactly
04:37 15 minutes.
04:39 At which point we'll uncover it, wet our fingers, and perform what I like to call the
04:44 old flop and turn.
04:46 Which means grabbing the dough on the edge of the bowl, and then flopping it over the
04:50 top, and then turning the bowl a couple inches, and then grabbing that dough right where the
04:54 crease was formed from the last flop.
04:57 And for this first set, we're going to keep going until the dough really isn't into it
05:00 anymore and it starts springing back, resisting your ability to flop it all the way over.
05:06 And once that happens, we will stop and kind of turn over the dough.
05:10 And then using some nice damp fingers, we will kind of slide our hand underneath the
05:13 dough in an attempt to get a nice smooth skin over the top.
05:18 But this was just the first step, so we don't need anything too perfect here.
05:22 Let's get a look at anything remotely similar, at which point we will cover it up, and we'll
05:27 set our timer for another 15 minutes, at which point we'll do the exact same thing.
05:33 And what the game plan is here, we will do three sets of the old flop and turn, 15 minutes
05:38 apart, and then after that, as you will see, we will move to working on the counter for
05:43 three more sets of a completely different type of fold.
05:47 And the purpose of all this manipulation is to build up a very strong gluten structure.
05:52 And the stronger this structure is, the higher your bread's going to rise, and the better
05:56 your crust's going to be, and as you will see, you're going to have a beautiful crumb
06:00 structure, which is what bakers call those holes you see when you slice the bread.
06:04 Oh, and I should mention, the reason this video is going to be so long is because I
06:09 wanted you to see all these steps in real time, and I really dislike the sped up time
06:14 lapse footage.
06:15 So you can watch this on a higher speed if you want, but I did want to edit things tighter,
06:20 and I wanted you to see how it's really going to look.
06:24 But anyway, like I said, we're going to perform the old flop and turn three times,
06:28 doing those 15 minutes apart, but after we finish the last one, we're going to set our
06:34 timer for 30 minutes, at which point we'll do the next three folds on the counter.
06:40 And by the way, pro tip, before you scrape your dough onto the counter, I like to rub
06:44 a few drops of water on the surface, which is going to help prevent the dough from sticking.
06:48 And once down, what we'll do is wet our fingers and perform what I call the old stretch and
06:53 fold.
06:54 Okay, we'll sort of slide our fingers under the corners, stretching the dough out into
06:58 some kind of square shape, and the bigger we stretch it, the better, but this is just
07:02 the first one, so something about 12 inches wide is fine.
07:06 And then what we'll do is grab the corners and fold this into thirds, and then we'll
07:11 grab the top end and fold it in half back towards us, and then we'll dampen our fingers
07:16 and put our thumbs right in the center, and we'll fold the dough back, at which point
07:20 we'll sort of roll it up towards us, stretching the dough as we go.
07:25 And then we'll dampen our hands again, and use sort of a circular motion to turn and
07:28 rotate this back into a ball of dough, which we can just do with our hands, but if we want,
07:34 and most people do, we can use a flat bench scraper.
07:38 And I'm trying to do this a lot slower than I usually do, but what we're doing is sort
07:41 of giving it a turn, and towards the end of that turn, we're using that bench scraper
07:46 held at an angle, to first and foremost get this back into a ball shape.
07:50 And yes, you can use either side.
07:53 And that's it for the first 30 minute fold, we did pretty good.
07:56 And once we're happy with that reshaping, we'll transfer that back into our bowl, and
08:01 we'll set our timer for 30 more minutes, at which point we'll perform the old stretch
08:06 and fold for a second time.
08:08 And one of my favorite parts of this whole operation, is feeling how the dough is changing
08:13 as we do these folds.
08:15 Keep in mind that yeast is growing, and our dough is rising, and getting more elastic.
08:20 And each time we do this, once we finish, it's holding its shape a little better, which
08:25 again is the whole idea of these movements.
08:28 We could just let the dough rise without doing anything to it, and then eventually shape
08:32 our loaf, and let it proof and bake it.
08:34 But it is just not going to be nearly as impressive.
08:38 Okay so that was fold number two, and we'll grab our bench scraper, and use that rotate
08:42 with a little push at the end method, for shaping this back into a nice tight ball of
08:46 dough.
08:47 At which point it goes back in the bowl, and gets covered, and we set our timer for 30
08:52 minutes.
08:53 Which will bring us up to the third and final, old stretch and fold.
08:57 And while that happens, let me brag a little bit.
09:00 Okay most of those really picturesque sourdoughs you see online, with that beautiful crust,
09:05 and gorgeous open crumb, those are generally done with mostly bread flour, and maybe a
09:10 little bit of wheat flour.
09:11 But here we're using like 36-37% wheat flour, which is generally considered not as easy
09:17 to work with.
09:18 But the advantage is, this produces in my opinion, a bread that has more flavor, and
09:23 definitely more fiber, which makes it more nutritious.
09:27 And as long as we're performing all these folding and shaping steps, we can totally
09:30 get away with it.
09:33 And after this second fold, and definitely after the third one, when we switch to the
09:37 bench scraper, to form this back into a ball of dough, besides achieving a nice uniform
09:41 shape, when we finish that turning rotating motion, we want to concentrate on pushing
09:46 with the side of the scraper, which since the dough is sort of sticking to the counter,
09:50 is going to help stretch the dough at the top, nice and taut, and a nice smooth tight
09:55 surface on top of your dough, is one of the keys to a great loaf.
09:59 And that's it, finally our six folds are done.
10:02 And we will transfer that back into our bowl, and cover it up again, and then we'll let
10:06 it sit on the counter for about four hours, or until it's beautifully bubbly, and is about
10:11 doubled in size.
10:12 And in case you're wondering, this step is called the bulk ferment, and exactly how long
10:17 it takes depends on the temperature of your kitchen, and if everything goes according
10:21 to plan, it will hopefully look like this.
10:25 And if you give the bowl a wiggle, the dough will jiggle.
10:27 Oh, and if the lighting looks different, that's because it's dark now.
10:31 I mean, we started this thing like 11 hours ago.
10:34 But anyway, after the bulk ferments, we will scrape that dough onto our counter, and then
10:39 we're pretty much going to do the same stretch fold, and form back into a ball move, that
10:43 we did during those last three sets of folds.
10:46 Except now the dough is in a much more fluid condition, and it's not going to be quite
10:50 as easy, but you'll still be able to get it done.
10:53 And if some of the dough tears or sticks, or breaks off, just grab it and stick it back
10:57 on.
10:59 And I mostly will use some damp hands for this, since damp hands don't stick.
11:04 But feel free to switch back to the bench scraper at any time.
11:08 And while I don't want you to be afraid of deflating the dough, I also don't want you
11:12 to unnecessarily deflate the dough.
11:15 So we'll want to try to be a little more gentle, but we do want to get it back into a ball,
11:19 with again a nice smooth skin on the top.
11:22 And once that's been accomplished, we will dust the top with flour, and we'll set our
11:26 timer for 30 minutes, since what we just did is called the pre-shape.
11:32 And after 30 minutes we will finish up with the final shaping.
11:35 And fair warning, during that 30 minutes, the dough is definitely going to flatten out
11:39 a little bit, which is totally normal and fine.
11:43 And then after the 30 minutes, we will lightly dust the surface next to the dough, since
11:47 our next move is to take the bench scraper, and use it to flop it over, with the flour
11:52 side down.
11:54 And then I also like to get a little bit of flour on my fingertips, at which point we'll
11:58 do our final tri-fold.
11:59 And again, I don't want you to play scared, but I do want you to concentrate on being
12:04 gentle, and not deflating this dough any more than necessary.
12:08 And by the way, unless you've felt a sourdough at this point, you have not really lived a
12:12 full life.
12:14 It just feels unbelievably good.
12:17 In fact, it's tempting to touch a little too much, in a little too long, which I actually
12:21 might be doing here.
12:24 But I caught myself, and eventually decided to stop.
12:28 And then for one last time, we'll take our bench scraper, and to the best of our abilities,
12:32 shape this into a nice round ball, that's as high and tight and perky as possible.
12:37 Oh, you heard me, as perky as possible.
12:41 And for this last shaping, make sure you take your time, since we really, really do want,
12:47 and stop me if you've heard this before, we really, really do want a nice, smooth,
12:51 very tight skin of dough over the top.
12:54 And then once we do reach peak perkiness, what we'll do is stop and get this into our
12:57 bread basket.
12:59 But before we do the transfer, we'll want to dust the top with flour.
13:03 And after we do that, is it necessary to caress the flour over the top?
13:08 No.
13:09 Should you do it anyway?
13:11 Absolutely.
13:12 Man, that feels good.
13:14 And then what we'll do next is grab our banneton, which has been generously dusted with rice
13:18 flour, and we will carefully but confidently slide our bench scraper under the dough, and
13:23 flip that over onto our hand, and then very, very gently lower that into the basket, at
13:29 which point we'll perform an optional, but I think critical step, which is called stitching
13:34 the dough.
13:36 And we want to be semi-gentle, but what we'll do is grab some dough and pull it up over
13:39 the top, and then grab some from the opposite side and pull that over the other way.
13:45 And we'll do that like three or four times.
13:48 And what that does is make the skin around our dough even tighter.
13:51 And then as soon as we do that, we'll go around sprinkling a little flour around the edge,
13:56 since even though it's sitting up nice and proud now, as this sits in the fridge, it's
13:59 going to spread out.
14:01 So sprinkling around a little flour at this point's not a bad idea.
14:05 And that's it.
14:06 We'll cover this back up, and we'll pop it in the fridge to proof overnight, since I
14:10 like to put this loaf in the oven exactly 14 hours after it goes in the fridge.
14:15 And some people use a poke test instead of going by time, but I haven't found that that
14:19 reliable.
14:20 So I just simply bake 14 hours later, and it seems to work out pretty well.
14:25 But the next day, an hour before that happens, we want to put whatever we're going to bake
14:29 our bread on or in, in the oven, and preheat it to 500.
14:33 And what I'm going to use is this cast iron bread baking pan called a Challenger, which
14:37 is basically an upside down Dutch oven.
14:40 But no matter what method you're going to use to cook your sourdough, we're definitely
14:43 going to want to preheat the oven first.
14:46 And while that's happening, I'm going to prep my parchment, which we'll do by folding it
14:50 in half, and then we'll use some scissors to cut around, forming a nice oval shape.
14:56 And we'll use this parchment to transfer our dough onto the pan, or as some of you like
15:00 to use, into a Dutch oven, or onto a hot pizza stone, or just regular baking sheet.
15:06 And then we can also grab our bread lame, which is a razor used to score the loaf, plus
15:10 some nicely insulated oven mitts to get our pan in and out.
15:14 And that's it.
15:15 Once our oven's been at 500 for an hour, we will pull out our dough and take a look.
15:20 And at this point, it's been proofing in the fridge for 14 hours.
15:23 And as I mentioned, some people like to poke it to test to see if it's ready to bake, but
15:27 I can never really tell what's happening.
15:29 All right, some spots we poke will spring back, and some spots will stay depressed,
15:34 which again is why I just like to go with the time.
15:37 And what we'll do is place our parchment over the top, making sure it's centered.
15:41 And then we'll very carefully flip it over and gently lower it to the counter while we
15:45 slide our hand from underneath.
15:47 And then once we've removed the banneton, we will take our lame, or a razor, or any
15:52 sharp knife, and we'll make a cut at a 45 degree angle about a quarter inch deep, all
15:57 the way across the loaf about one third in.
16:00 And once that's been accomplished, we will put our gloves on and take our pan out of
16:03 the oven.
16:04 And by the way, I oiled this so it would look nice for the video, which explains that wisp
16:08 of smoke you're going to see.
16:09 And what we'll do is carefully lift the parchment up and transfer the loaf on.
16:14 And then before we cover it, we'll add two ice cubes, one at each end.
16:18 And it's that trap steam produced by the ice that's going to give us what the pros call
16:22 oven spring.
16:23 And what we'll do is put our gloves back on and place on the lid.
16:27 And we'll bake that covered at 500 for exactly 20 minutes.
16:31 So we will set a timer.
16:33 And 20 minutes later when it rings, we will open the oven and take off the lid.
16:38 And then you don't have to, but I'm going to turn this around so you can get a peek
16:41 at the ear.
16:43 And then to finish, we will lower our heat to 450 and we will bake this for another 35
16:49 minutes, at which point you should be looking at a beautifully browned, beautifully risen,
16:54 absolutely gorgeous loaf of bread that hopefully looks like this.
16:58 Oh yeah, check it out.
17:00 And hopefully you can see that beautifully blistered crust, which you will definitely
17:04 get if you use the challenger with the ice cubes, or even just a Dutch oven that's covered
17:08 with the ice cubes.
17:10 And at this point we have our toughest challenge, which is letting this cool for one hour before
17:14 we slice in.
17:16 Since if you slice in hot, you're going to lose a lot of steam, which is moisture, and
17:21 you'll end up with a drier product.
17:23 So please let it cool before you slice in, which I did.
17:26 And even if you do everything right, and it bakes up and looks nice, you really never
17:31 know what the crumb structure is going to look like.
17:33 Right?
17:34 Sourdough is like a box of snowflakes.
17:36 You never know what you're going to get.
17:38 And they're all different.
17:40 But as you can see here, we pretty much nailed it.
17:43 And for a sourdough with this much wheat flour, I could not have been happier with the results.
17:48 So pretty much perfect inside check.
17:51 But what about the crust?
17:53 Is it going to be nice and crispy?
17:54 Well, you know what?
17:56 Take a listen.
17:57 Oh yeah, that sounds about right.
18:03 And then as far as the taste goes, it's pretty much indescribable, which means I won't be
18:08 able to describe it, but I will be able to spread on some goat butter and take a few
18:13 bites so I can marvel at the magic that is homemade sourdough.
18:18 And by the way, if I was forced to describe it, I would say it has the perfect level of
18:22 tanginess.
18:23 Very beautifully sour, but not too sour.
18:25 And as I've already mentioned, I think sourdoughs that have a good amount of wheat flour are
18:29 always more flavorful and a little more satisfying.
18:33 And yes, it took like two days to do, and there was a million steps, but all the steps
18:38 really are fairly simple and only take a few minutes each to complete.
18:42 Right, the hardest part is figuring out the timing of when to start it so that you're
18:46 able to bake this at a decent hour.
18:48 All right, I generally like to get mine in the fridge proofing about 11 p.m. so I can
18:53 bake at 1 p.m. the next day.
18:56 But anyway, that's going to be up to you.
18:57 I mean, you are after all the Chef John of this sourdough bread marathon.
19:03 Speaking of which, if you made it through this entire video, which may be the longest
19:07 one I've ever posted, I want to thank you very much and tell you how much I love you.
19:12 And I'll finish up by saying, I really do hope you give this a try soon.
19:17 So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much
19:22 more info as usual.
19:24 And as always, enjoy!
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