And I get it.

The idea of using fresh milled flour at all can be intimidating, add in a live, fermented yeast culture, and even experienced cooks may run to the hills. Or I guess toss in the (kitchen) towel might be a better analogy.

But I got your back. If you want to know how to make potentially the most nutrient-dense, deeply delicious loaf of bread you will ever make, stick with me.

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What does sourdough bread taste like when made with fresh milled flour?

Fresh flour tends to lend a nuttier, sweeter, fuller flavor than refined flour to anything you bake with it, but especially bread.

Then the delicious notes of subtle sourness brought in by your sourdough starter make this bread irresistible.

Combining the sourness of the starter + the sweet boldness of the fresh flour = perfect flavor combination.

Not to mention the health benefits of fresh flour and the fermented benefits of sourdough combined are ideal on your gut, your blood sugar, and your waistline.

What can be bad about bread that tastes amazing and is good for you?

Does my sourdough starter need to be made with fresh milled flour?

If you want this to be a purely fresh flour loaf, you will need a starter made or fed consistently with fresh milled flour. But feel free to use your starter as is too, if it’s always just been feed refined flour. Either way will work fine and give you a delicious loaf of bread.

But when possible, the more fresh flour you use, the better. The higher mineral content of fresh flour produces more acid in your dough, which helps with the fermentation process of sourdough.

And, keep in mind that sourdough starters eat the flour you feed it through a process of fermentation, so you’re not directly eating the flour that your starter eats anyway.

Sourdough Bread Made with Fresh Milled Flour

How to make sourdough bread with fresh milled flour

The most important thing about making sourdough bread with fresh milled flour is knowing how to care for your fresh flour sourdough starter, so we’ll start there…

Unless you’re storing it in the fridge and only bringing it out to use it, you’ll want to try to feed your sourdough starter with fresh flour and water twice daily. (But I pretty much screw this up at least once a week, so keep reading.)

I like to keep my starter the consistency of heavy cake or pancake batter. This leads to less giant “holes” in each slice of bread. If you like a more open crumb (aka big air holes in your sourdough), that’s totally fine, just feed your starter more water than flour and keep it a more runny consistency.

But you will find with fresh flour there is just a little more difficulty in getting the bread to rise. A thicker starter helps combat this problem a little as well.

Also I find that fresh milled rye flour tends to get my starter more active than other flours. Read more about that below.

People ask all the time why their starter isn’t doubling in size. One answer is that you might just not be feeding it enough flour in your flour/water equation. Try feeding your starter at a thicker consistency and see if that helps.

A few sidenotes:

I tend to forget to feed my starter twice a day, a few days every week. It will survive some neglect. You will just need to spend time “building it back up” to a bubbly active starter, but that’s not too hard to do.

I don’t know the science behind it, but a fresh flour starter does seem to need to be fed more often than a regular starter. If not, it develops a hooch–that gray liquid that covers the top that is the alcohol given off as your wild yeast is fermenting. When you see hooch, no worries, just pour it off the top and feed your starter.

What to do the night before you’re making your sourdough bread, with fresh flour 

The night before your bread-making day, you want to autolyze your flour. That’s a fancy term I learned in one of my latest reads that I’m loving, Flour Lab, by Adam Leonti. Don’t let the fancy term scare you if you’re not a bread chef and connoisseur (not many of us are, me included).

Essentially, when you autolyze flour, you’re letting the fresh milled flour and water get to know each other and rest, before any other ingredients are involved. This brief rest time hydrates the flour (which can be a little tricky to get just right with fresh flour) and activates the enzymes that are so important in the bread making process. Bonus, it makes the mixing a little easier later on too.

To autolyze the flour, all you need to do is get out a medium sized bowl and place in:

1 1/2 cups warm, filtered water 

3 cups of fresh milled flour (I use this hard white wheat. About 2-2.5 cups of berries will be needed in your grain mill.)

Mix just these two ingredients, cover bowl with towel, and let them sit for at least 10 minutes. I tend to let them sit for an hour or so. today 4 1/2 hrs. (have pic of when first mixed 6/2/23) Then mix in:

1 cup sourdough starter (have pic 6/2)

After mixing, let sit for 10 additional minutes. If the dough is still too moist after resting, add a generous tablespoon more of fresh flour and mix in well. (I added 1 and 1/2 TB and mixed well. still SLIGHTLY sticky, like a little bit stays on your fingers when you play with it but not much. Now it forms a ball. have pic 6/2)

Cover your bowl with a towel & let set overnight on your kitchen counter.

What to do the morning that you’re baking your sourdough bread, with fresh flour 

In the morning, you’ll find your dough is taking up more space in the bowl. 

Add these ingredients:

1 tb sugar (I use maple sugar or this organic sugar)

1 tb salt (this salt is my favorite. Use code SOULYRESTED to save)

1/2 cup of fresh milled hard white flour ( I get my wheat berries here)

Knead just until all combined and nice texture; not too sticky. If you’ve let your flour soak up the liquids for plenty of time, at this stage you will have a nice, non-sticky dough. If it is sticky, use wet hands for kneading and working with it and you should be fine.

Place your dough in bowl twice its size, that you’ve prepared with a thin layer of oil (I spray on avocado oil using this wonderful tool), and cover bowl with a towel (or plastic wrap that you spray underneath, so the rising dough won’t stick to it). 

What to do the afternoon that you’re baking your sourdough bread, with fresh flour 

When it’s about 1.5x in size, it’s time to work with your dough. (Sourdough doesn’t double. If it does, it’s probably overproofed.)

First, get your oven preheating to 425, with your bread pan in the oven, also preheating. (I love my bread pans.) Then jiggle the dough out of the bowl and onto your counter (believe it or not, there shouldn’t be a need for flour on your counter, but dust some rice flour on if you find you need it).

Gently flatten the dough, using light finger or knuckle pressure. Create a ball of dough by pulling a top “corner” in, pressing down, and rotating your circle of dough 90 degrees. Keep doing this until your dough is no longer stretchy, about 10-12 pulls/turns. You now have a nice ball of dough. Having a nice ball now means a firmer, airy loaf of bread later.

Turn the ball over and lightly dust with rice flour. Cover with a towel and let it rest for 10 minutes. (This is called a “bench rest.”)

After 10 minutes, smooch your ball of dough into a rectangle the right length for your pan (or just a square for an artisan loaf that will be baked in a dutch oven).

I then make a kind of “house” shape then roll the dough, from the pointed “roof,” down, firmly pressing the dough together with each roll. I will pinch the seam and/or pull the log or circle of dough along the counter to try to eliminate a seam.

I place my log of dough on parchment paper inside of the lid of my ceramic bread baker. (While the bottom of the pan is preheating.) I cover it with a kitchen towel and set it in a draft-free area for about 1/2 hour.

You can know it’s done rising when a gentle finger poke doesn’t bounce back. 

Score your bread then transfer to your hot baking pan.

Using the paper to lift it easily, remove the loaf out of the lid it’s been rising in, place it (on its parchment paper) into the hot bread pan, and cover with the lid.

Bake both on center rack at 425 for 20 minutes. Then remove lid and leave an additional 10 minutes or so, until crust is done. 

If you’re a visual person…

I documented my bread making on my instagram stories. Find the whole bread-making process right here.

While you’re there please say “hi” and follow my page. Instagram is my favorite “hang out,” & I’d love to see you there.

The hardest part of making sourdough bread with fresh flour?

This last step is possibly the hardest part of the entire process… At least it is for Bill.

You have to wait before cutting into the loaf.

If you slice into your loaf right away, you will have doughy, squishy bread. Wait 20 minutes, and you’ll have a firm, airy piece of bread that you are bound to love.

How to have the best crust on your sourdough bread?

For added amazingness, brush an egg (with a little water added) to lightly coat the top of your dough after its 2nd rise but before baking. Then sprinkle everything seasoning all over top. YUM.

Go here for my recipe for making DIY Everything Seasoning.

Want to know even more about fresh flour?

Go here to dive into my free e-course all about fresh flour. You’ll be glad you did.

I talk about my grain mill, as well as the 11 other kitchen tools I seriously would hate to be without, in this episode of my podcast… Click below or listen on Apple Podcasts here.

Your Questions About Making Sourdough Bread with Fresh Milled Flour

Which flour is best for feeding a sourdough starter?

It’s all a matter of preference. While I typically feed my starter fresh milled rye flour (made with these wheat berries), I will also use whatever flour I have some extra of, on hand, which often includes hard white, hard red, and spelt.

In my opinion, rye flour has the best results, making my starter nice and bubbly. It makes sense, because Rye is naturally rich in yeast.

If you want to feed your starter store-bought refined flour, I won’t judge you. In the end, sourdough starters eat the flour you feed it through a process of fermentation, so you’re not directly eating the flour that your starter eats anyway.

Can I use plain flour instead of fresh flour for my sourdough starter?

If by “plain” you mean store-bought, white refined flour, yes, you definitely can. Honestly, you can use any flour you would like to feed your starter, even if you plan to only use fresh flour for making your bread. Conversely, you can use fresh flour to feed your starter and then use refined flour to make your bread. Any way you “do” it, it’ll work, and it will be 100% better than buying store-bought sandwich bread.

Can you bake with milled flour?

I bake with fresh-milled flour all the time. My preference is Soft White for baked goods.

Here’s my recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies made with Fresh Flour

How do you use fresh milled flour?

That’s a great question with a longer answer than I can give you here, but dive into my totally free e-course on milling your own flour right here.

Products I Love Using for Making Sourdough Bread with Fresh-Milled Flour

Pssst… Want in on my real food secret? I get all the best ingredients & healthy snacks by doing my monthly food shopping with Azure Standard. Their quality and prices can’t be beat, I haven’t found quality wheat berries anywhere else anywhere near their prices, and we love to get staples there that I can’t even find at the local grocery store. See if they deliver near you. 

More on Fresh Milled Flour:

• Why You Should Grind Your Own Flour (cost, health benefits, and more)
• Homemade Tortillas With Fresh Milled Flour (recipe)
• Why I Started Milling My Own Flour (and 5 tips for you)
• Chocolate Chip Cookies Made With Fresh Flour (recipe)

–> AND DON’T FORGET! … Go here to dive into my free e-course all about fresh flour. You’ll be glad you did.

“Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.”
Isaiah 55:2

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Win a Grain Mill!

Enter to win a Classic Grain Mill & free access to Fresh Flour University!

The post Sourdough Bread Made with Fresh Milled Flour first appeared on Souly Rested.

So I thought it was time I break down the details… no fluff…

Can you Double a Sourdough Bread Recipe?

Yes! Not only can you, I’d argue you should double your sourdough bread recipe! This is how to make two loaves of amazing sourdough bread at once.

But consider yourself warned. You might be a sourdough addict in no time flat.

If you’re new to sourdough or bread making in general, start here: How I Make Sourdough Bread WIthout Wasted Discard That’s a thorough run down of everything you need to know.

Sourdough Bread. Doubled.

Today I’m giving you the one-stop page to pull up whenever you want to make a few loaves of delicious homemade bread for your family. For me, it’s once a week. And yes, I refer to this page every stinking time. Nope, I don’t have this recipe memorized, I just have it bookmarked. If you like to pin your recipes to find them easily, pin this one right here.

The Night Before

In an extra large bowl (this is mine), add these ingredients:

3 cups warm, filtered water 

2 cup sourdough starter (I explain how to make a sourdough starter here)

6 cups of flour (If I can’t mill fresh flour, I like this flour, but I get my wheat berries here)

Mix & let set overnight in bowl on your kitchen counter that you’ve covered over with a towel.

You don’t even have to mix it super well. It doesn’t need to be like true dough.

In the Morning

In the morning, you’ll discover your dough has risen to fill (or overflow) your bowl.

Add these ingredients, right on top:

2 TB sugar (I use maple sugar)

2 TB salt (this salt is my favorite)

2 cup of flour 

Add a little more flour if needed (no more than 1 more cup).

Knead in the bowl a little, just until all the ingredients are incorporated. This is what your dough should look like at this stage:

Drop your dough onto the counter and kneed a little more (just a minute or so) until you have a nice texture. No need to overwork the dough. It won’t be smooth, but will look like the picture below. Then place it in a clean bowl you have oiled well. I like spraying my bowl with avocado oil, using this sprayer. Cover your bowl with a towel and let the dough rise until it’s about 1.5x it’s size.

In the Afternoon

Jiggle your beautiful dough out of the bowl and onto the counter, where you can divide it. Create two “balls” by pulling a top “corner” in, pressing down, and rotating your circle of dough 90 degrees. Keep doing this until your dough is no longer stretchy, about a dozen pulls/turns. You now have a nice ball of dough, which will lead to a firmer, airy loaf of bread.

Turn the balls over and lightly dust w flour. Cover each with a towel and let have a bench rest for 10 minutes. 

After the bench rest, I pre-heat the oven to 350, place my bread pans in to preheat, and prepare the loaves to rise one final (much shorter) time in the lids of the bread pans. Read more about the final rise of your sourdough bread here, if you need some pointers for this stage.

Baking Your Sourdough Loaves

When oven is nice and hot (and after the final rise), score your dough, transfer the loaves from the lids to the hot pans in the oven (I line my lids with parchment paper, which makes the transfer super easy) and bake for 30-40 minutes.

Remove lids and let loaves brown another 8-10 minutes.

Remove from oven and place loaves (without parchment paper) on a cooling rack, covered with a kitchen towel. Let rest for 10-20 minutes then enjoy.

10 Tips for Doubling Your Sourdough Bread Recipe

• Feel free to experiment with any old bread pans you have, glass, cast iron, stone, whatever you have. After years of trying all of the above, I found these pans produce far superior, consistent results I’m looking for. Since I’m baking a few loaves of bread every week, I just don’t want to waste time on sub-par baking results.
• In this article I explain how you can also make two different size or shaped loaves.
• Don’t forget to score your loaves… it might sound silly but once I started doubling my amount that I was baking I somehow was much more likely to forget this step.
• Place a cookie sheet on the bottom rack of your oven, below your bread pans, to keep the bottom of your loaves from getting overcooked. (While the above loaf was delicious, I forgot to place the cookie sheet under it in the oven and you can see my loaf bottom got a little too done.)
• Feel free to double this recipe and make four loaves if you’d like. If you only have 2 pans, it’s perfectly fine to bake 2 at a time, back to back.
• Also feel free to half this recipe and make a single loaf of bread.
• While this recipe works with any flour, sugar, and salt you have on hand, some options do indeed give superior results. Go here to grab my complete Pantry List that you can print out and use to help you make sure you always have the ingredients on hand the you need, when you need them.
• Watch me make two sourdough loaves in this instagram highlight.
• The best way to know if your loaves are done is to check the internal temperature with a digital thermometer like this one. It should register around 190-200F.
• See my favorite ingredients in my kitchen (including the flour, sugar, and salt I often use for this sourdough bread recipe).

Watch Every Step of the Process

I documented my process, from starter to bread, one day on my instagram stories and saved the whole bread-making process right here if you’d like to watch.

While you’re there please say “hi” and follow my page. I find instagram to be my favorite “hang out,” and would love to see you there.

Talk to me!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. And please tag me on ig to show me your amazing sourdough bread @souly.rested.

A Few Things I Use for Making Sourdough Bread

Want more sourdough?

Sourdough Pizza Crust

Sourdough Bread Bowls

How to Make Sourdough Without Discard

More info & recipes you’ll love:

Fermented Drink Recipes

How to make real butter.

How a homesteader makes French toast.

Products I LOVE that can turn every kitchen into a homestead-kind-of kitchen.

Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands. I Thessalonians 4:11

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2022.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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So today I’m sharing my #1 go-to recipe for homemade pizza crust.

I do have a fool-proof sourdough pizza crust recipe that I love, but today I’m sharing the recipe I use when I forgot to plan ahead. I still toss in some sourdough discard… cause of course… but that is totally optional with this recipe.

So, yes, if you’re just searching for a good, regular-ole homemade pizza crust recipe, you’re in the right place.

If you have a little yeast and a few cups of flour, you got this.

This recipe makes one very generous sized pizza, for filling this favorite pan. But I always double it and make 3 medium-sized pizzas, with different toppings. The dough also keeps very well, so feel free to double the recipe and wrap 1/2 of the dough in saran wrap and tuck it in your fridge until next week’s pizza night. Seriously. It keeps a week in the fridge.

Homemade Pizza Crust

Pizza Crust Ingredients

2 tsp yeast

2 tsp sugar

1 and 1/3 cups warm water

1/2 cup sourdough discard (totally optional)

up to 3 cups flour (I often use fresh milled flour, but any all-purpose flour will do fine) *

1 tablespoon oil (I use this avocado oil for everything)

1 tsp salt (I always use this one)

Garlic powder (optional)

Oregano (optional)

Pizza Crust Directions

1. Proof water, sugar & yeast by placing yeast in a large bowl then adding sugar and the water (I call it “bathwater-warm”) on top. Let this sit, unstirred and untouched until it’s foamy. Usually about 5 minutes.
2. If you have sourdough discard, add that in here, after water has turned foamy. (But, again, trust me, this is totally optional. And feel free to add more or less than 1/2 cup as well. Trust me. This recipe is very forgiving.)
3. Add oil, salt, optional garlic powder and oregano, and flour. But add your flour slowly. Most likely you will NOT need all 3 cups. You may need as little as 2 cups. *
4. Knead dough just enough so it’s all together and somewhat smooth. (This just takes a minute or two. This is the stage the dough is at in the photo above.)
5. Turn oven to 100 then turn off. Oil glass bowl and roll dough oil in bowl, so it’s covered in light coating of oil. Cover bowl with a towel and set it in the TURNED OFF oven (or non drafty, warm location) until it doubles in size. (Usually this only takes 1/2 hour, maybe even less.) The photo below is the risen dough, ready to be turned out and shaped into pizzas. (Those lovely bubbles in the dough are thanks to the sourdough discard I tossed in.)
6. Turn out and shape dough and wrap and refrigerate any extra. (I shape dough on parchment paper and then use a peel to transfer the pizza, on the parchment paper, to my pre-heated pan, in the oven.) Add sauce, toppings, and cheese, and bake at 400 for 10-15 minutes.

*If you’d like to incorporate fresh ground flour into this recipe (I love making my own fresh flour with this grain mill), read more below.

Special Instructions for using fresh flour

If you’re using fresh flour to make this homemade pizza crust (with or without the optional sourdough discard) here are some additional tips:

Out of 3 cups of flour, I will use 1- 1.5 cups fresh flour. One cup hard white wheat berries makes 1 1/2 cups fresh flour if I’m using this grain mill. For the rest of my flour, I’ll use 1-2 cups of organic flour.

The most important thing to do if you want to incorporate fresh flour into this recipe is to be sure to add the fresh flour first, lightly mix everything, and then let your shag set for 10 minutes before adding the rest of the flour. This is because fresh flour absorbs more moisture than standard flour will and you want to give it time to incorporate the moisture so you know how much more flour is needed.

Also, with fresh flour your dough will always be a little more sticky. That’s okay. You don’t want to over-add flour, so slightly sticky is okay. Just use a little oil on your fingers if you need it to knead the dough.

OR go here for exactly how I make my brick oven pizza with 100% fresh milled flour (my personal favorite way to make it): Fresh Milled Flour Pizza

If You’d Like to Know More About Fresh Flour…

My favorite products for making homemade pizza crust with optional sourdough discard:

Click on any image to know more. –>

Other articles you’ll love:

Super Easy Way I Make Sourdough Bread without Discard

Why & How I Mill My Own Fresh Flour

How I Make Bread Bowls for Soup

Tools I Wouldn’t Want to be Without in my Farmhouse Kitchen

“He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” Psalm 107:9

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Even in the midst of a viral pandemic that is sweeping the world. Even after a not-so-great sugar season, that gave us about 1/2 the total amount of maple syrup that we usually make. Even in the midst of a cold, dreary, gray-sky spring day that doesn’t feel like spring… Even then, these bowls make me happy.

How to Make Sourdough Bread Bowls

So today I’m sharing with you how I make these little edible bowls that hold my soup and cheer my day.

If you’re new to sourdough

Actually, there isn’t much to it, if you know how to make sourdough to begin with. If you’re new to sourdough, I got ya covered. I didn’t take up this art of bread making until recently myself, so I remember all too well the aura of elusiveness and difficulty that surrounded the mysterious sour-tasting, wild-yeast filled bread. Well, at least in my mind.

Once I just forced myself to take the plunge, sink or swim, succeed or fail, good crumb or bad, I realized it’s a pretty forgiving thing…. this “thing” of sourdough breadmaking.

I documented every step–every detail of how I make my sourdough bread–from creating your first starter to pulling the amazingness out of the hot oven, in this post all about Making Sourdough Bread.

This post contains affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

Yes, you can adapt it to fit your needs

To make sourdough bread bowls, I simply follow the recipe that I shared with you a few weeks ago (see my sourdough bread recipe right here), and I form 3-4 small balls of dough that I bake in this dutch oven that I love for bread baking. Yes, you do have to bake them all separately. Unless you have a couple dutch ovens (which believe it or not I do) and a large oven that will hold two dutch ovens at one time (which, sadly, I don’t).

And, yes, your dough will be much smaller than the circumference of your dutch oven. That’s totally fine. I remember the first time I did this I thought the bread would flatten out into a useless dough circle, but rest assured the dough will rise in the ball and be a nice little bowl for you.

Once the bread has cooled, cut out a divet into the round loaf so you have a bowl on the bottom and a wonderful (albeit odd shaped) piece of bread to eat with your soup.

Full disclosure: these pictures were taken over the course of many weeks… two different batches of bread bowls I made. I tend to prefer the bread bowl less crisp on the outside (the bottom picture), so it’s nice to eat when I’m all finished with my creamy soup and then finish off the bread.

Yet more full disclosure: I also sometimes store my bread bowl, covered in the fridge, and reuse it for another bowl of soup the next day. (I do scrape the soup out well after the first use and wouldn’t, of course, serve it to anyone other than myself.) In that case, the crisper outside crust works a little better.

Also, btw, if I’m the only one in the house who wants soup in a bowl on any given week, I like to double my recipe, then divide my prepared dough so that I have about 1/4 of the dough to make a large bread bowl and the other 3/4 is perfect to make one long loaf of sourdough bread in this pan–which happens to be one of my absolute favorite things in my kitchen. To know the other favorite items in my farmhouse kitchen, check out my full list of what I couldn’t live without in my farmhouse kitchen.

I mention this to encourage you to start with this recipe and then adapt it to whatever works best for you.

What soups are perfect in a sourdough bread bowl?

While you could truly serve any soup in a sourdough bread bowl, I am partial to the rich, creamy soups that soak into the tangy bread and make for sheer deliciousness, like my super-easy Squash Soup. My favorite combination? Cheesy broccoli soup in sourdough.

Gosh, I’m hungry just thinking about it.

Why would anyone have two dutch ovens?

As a side note, if you noticed above that I casually mentioned I have 2 dutch ovens, you may have wondered why. It turns out…

wait for it… because not may people can claim this interesting fact…

A cast iron dutch oven was included in the purchase of our house!

You see, our old farmhouse, which we built around 1800, has an open-fire cook area in the kitchen.

(Don’t be too impressed… our old farmhouse came with a lot of headaches and crooked walls and floors too.)

So the previous owner decided to leave a few cast iron items–including the dutch oven which they left hanging in the fireplace–and the handmade tools they had created for using with the pizza oven.

When I’m not using my dutch oven for bread making, I love heating Maple Apple Cider over the fire in it. Or taco soup.

Come to think of it, the only soup recipe I’ve shared here on SoulyRested is my super-easy Squash Soup. I guess now that I have published these directions for making sourdough bread bowls, I should consider sharing some soup recipes,huh? I do share my Homemade Taco Seasoning recipe here.

Here are some other links that might interest you:

How to make sourdough starter & bread.

How to make sourdough pizza crust.

The secret to making the perfect (giant!) cookie.

Super-easy Squash Soup.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.” John 6:35.

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

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Sourdough and pizza…

Keeping busy and family meals…

These simple joys carry a lot of weight in our home.

This happens to be one of my favorite uses for my sourdough starter.

Today I’m sharing one of our favorite pizza dough recipes with you.

I’ll share another sourdough pizza crust recipe in the weeks ahead (deep dish sourdough pizza crust), as well as explain how to use your sourdough starter in any recipe you want to, in addition to making a few loaves of delicious, easier-than-you’d-think Homemade Sourdough Bread.

But today, a gray New England spring afternoon that feels nothing like spring should, I’m making one of our family’s favorite dinners.

The wind is howling outside, and cold rains are hitting our old window panes.

But the sap has stopped flowing in the maples, and our last bottled syrup of the year is lined up waiting to go to the root cellar, so I am assured one day spring will truly arrive.

This post contains affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

A Big Sourdough Shout Out.

Before I share my recipe for Sourdough Pizza Crust, I need to give a huge shout-out to the book Sourdough: Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More. It’s loaded with recipes using sourdough starter (nothing like stating the obvious, right?) as well as sprouted grains. It has been my inspiration for a lot of deliciousness while we’re stuck at home these long weeks, and the source for this pizza crust recipe adaptation.

As I was writing my book, Sweet Maple, I reorganized the layout many times. It was important to me that my book flow logically, yet also creatively. I can tell Sarah Owens went through a similar thought process with her gorgeous book, where she breaks down her kitchen creativity by seasons, letting her delicious recipes and the inviting photos be inspired by seasonal harvests.

A Note About the Dough.

When you add in your flour and start to mix it it doesn’t look much like dough at all. Once I’ve incorporated it as much as in the first picture below I will then knead it by hand. (Yep, the best pizza to eat is pretty messy to make.)

Also, as with any dough, I usually add my flour in gradually. Some days I want a little more than the recipe calls for and some days I need less. For this picture I had added exactly what the recipe calls for and I wound up wasting flour (left over in the blue bowl).

Sourdough Pizza Crust

On pizza day (which is Friday around these parts, as my Daddy would’ve said) make your dough in the morning. You’ll want to give it plenty of time to rise, maybe 8-10 hours.

• 1/4 cup sourdough starter (I explain how to make your own starter right here)
• 1 cup water
• 2 tsp oil (I use this avocado oil)
• 2 cup flour (go here if you’d like to know more about using fresh flour)
• a pinch of salt (I use this one)

1. To make your dough, combine the first 3 ingredients. Then add the flour and salt and mix until you have a nice, soft dough. (Take care to only add as much flour as needed. You may find you need a little less than 2 cups or you may need a little more than that. Add until your dough is a nice consistency and not too stick.)
2. Oil a large bowl (I love this refillable oil sprayer), roll your ball of dough in the oil to coat it, then cover the bowl with a thin towel and let it sit at room temperature until it’s double in size. (But also read #4 below.) Any old bowl is fine, but this one happens to be my favorite.
3. When you’re ready to make the pizza, preheat your cast iron pan to 550°. This is the cast iron pan I love to use for this pizza (it also makes an amazing giant cookie). But this would work wonderfully too. Yes, btw, I’m asking you to get the oven super hot. The heat makes the sourdough use the first crucial 10 minutes of baking to its full advantage, giving you lots of wonderful bubbles in your baked crust.
4. Place your ball of dough on parchment paper and gently press it out, from the center until it’s the right size, about 10-12 inches in diameter. Being gentle leads to an airy crust. Also, I don’t find cornmeal or flour necessary. If you would like, feel free to dust your parchment paper with cornmeal at this stage. (Sidenote: I’ve had this recipe not rise much and make one 12-inch pizza. I’ve also had it rise very well many times, in which case I divide it and it makes two pizzas.)
5. Add your pizza toppings. Sauce, bacon, and cheese are our favorites.
6. Then lift your dough, on the parchment paper, directly into your hot pan, keeping the pan and the oven as hot as you’re able. (The less heat that escapes, the airy and bubblier your crust will be.)
7. Bake for 10-15 minutes, being sure to turn your parchment paper 180° half way through. When your cheese is bubbly and your crust is a pretty golden color, delicious dinner is served.

If you’re interested in knowing what items I couldn’t live without in my farmhouse kitchen, you want to check out this list of my kitchen loves.

So there you have it… one of our favorite things to make on a perfect Friday night… whether we are stuck at home or not, this sourdough pizza crust brings everyone to the family table.

Other posts I think you’ll love…

The Secret to Delicious, Make-ahead Biscuits

My Favorite Cookies Ever

Sourdough Bread Bowls

French Toast, with a Delicious Twist

The have-to-have things I love the most in my farmhouse kitchen

This post contains affiliate links & I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

My Favorite Products for This Recipe…

Click on any image to know more. –>

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31

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The post Sourdough Pizza Crust first appeared on Souly Rested.

I love it even more now that we’ve figured out how to make sourdough bread without any discard. Today I’m sharing my exact recipe and the technique I follow every week to make two loaves of sourdough bread right here in our farmhouse kitchen.

Go here if you’d like to know how to double your sourdough bread recipe.

This post contains affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

I do make other bread, now and then… especially my Maple Sandwich Bread, which I’m kinda in love with. I had tons of fun as a guest chef at the Xhibition Kitchen in Boston last month, where they asked me to demonstrate this favorite recipe from my newly-released, #1 in Food Science, book, Sweet Maple.

Isn’t Sourdough too Complicated?

While sandwich bread is a little simpler to make, and doesn’t require any daily maintenance, there’s something about the gorgeous crumb of a well-made sourdough loaf.

And that slightly sour taste… And that amazingly, lightly crisp crust… And the fact that this deliciousness is fermented amazingness–capturing good bacteria and yeast from the air, just like my homemade kombucha that I love so much.

This post contains affiliate links. Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

On one hand, yes, sourdough bread is more of a commitment than my sandwich bread recipe (you can find that in my book, btw, Sweet Maple, available on Amazon or, even better, grab a copy here and support local businesses with your purchase.)

But I’ve decided sourdough bread is very much worth the effort.

Plus, it’s really not complicated. The fact is, I have unmeaningly neglected my sourdough for a week or more at a time. It’s sitting right there on my counter and I totally forget to feed it. Every time it’s been totally fine. I’ll discard any hard crust that’s formed, rescue the drops of good dough-y-ness left and feed it well.

And on baking day I just make sure to choose a day that I know I’ll be around home. I can be out in the garden, doing farm chores, or just pulling up a chair by the kitchen fire, with my laptop in hand doing work in my favorite office ever. I just need to remember to check in on the bread process at the right times throughout the day. It only takes 5-10 minutes of my time a few times throughout the day, and voila we have amazing, fresh, good-for-our-gut bread for dinner (and all week long).

btw, if you would like to know what items I would not want to have to live without here in my farmhouse kitchen (like my most-favorite-ever ceramic bread pan) you’ll want to check out this list of my favorite kitchen items.

Do You Need a Starter?

Yes, you need a sourdough starter before you can make sourdough bread. While it’s super easy to make this yourself, you can buy one as well.

A sourdough starter is simply flour and water that you give a little bit of attention. (2:1 flour and filtered tap water.. or any water that is free of chlorine, which can kill a starter.)  When it’s well cared for, it makes bubbles. In fact, this is how you will know your starter is ready to use–a lot of beautiful bubbles will fill your starter, probably by day 7-10 if you’re using white flour. Day 2-3 with wheat flour, because wheat ferments faster. (btw, feel free to start with wheat then switch over to white; no problem.)

It’s those wonderful bubbles that magically make your bread rise.

Once you have a starter, you never have to make one again.

I will tell you that I care for my starter a little differently than most people do. I hate the idea of throwing away a cup or more starter every day–which is the way most folks recommend you do it. But it just seemed so wasteful. Yes, I know there are numerous recipes that call for a cup or two of sourdough, but I’d rather build up my starter a few days ahead when I want extra, so I have enough when I want to do those things, than throw away starter aimlessly and often. (Building up my starter simply means I feed it lots of flour and water–at a 2:1 ratio–a few days before I want to use it.)

So I keep my starter in a plain ole, wide-mouth quart jar, covered with a small piece of fabric (to keep unwanted bugs out). Then, on an average day, I simply feed my starter a little flour and filtered water and stir it well with a narrow wooden spoon. I don’t measure my amounts of flour and water, just add enough of each to keep the starter a nice, thick, pancake-batter thickness. No it doesn’t grow quickly, but I find it’s just the right amount when it’s time to make bread once a week, which is 2 cups of starter (since I double the recipe below) and a nice layer of starter left behind.

How Do I Make Sourdough Bread (with no discard)

What I do once a day

Daily you want to feed your starter… add filtered water, then add flour until the starter is the consistency of heavy cake batter… Just keep in mind that you’re better with too much flour than too much water. Well, in my opinion at least. This way you’ll have less holes in your bread, (in the “crumb”) and a very nice slice of bread.

And you’ll find it easier to get your bread to rise if your starter is thicker, not watery. Also, if it’s too watery it doesn’t have enough body to double.

And don’t sweat it if you forget to feed it one day… or 3 or 4. It will survive a lot of neglect. You just may not have a nice bubbly starter ready for your next loaf of bread.

Two nights before bread-baking day, feel free to add more flour and water if it’s not looking like you’ll have enough bubbly starter for the recipe.

What I do the night before

It sounds more complicated than it is to say that making sourdough bread is a 2-day process because honestly the first day’s effort is almost non-existent. You mix a few things together in a bowl. That’s it.

In a large bowl, add these ingredients:

1 1/2 cups warm, filtered water 

1 cup sourdough starter 

3 cups of flour

I double this each week, to make the 2 loaves you see below. I recently shared the full details on how to double your sourdough bread recipe too.

With this recipe doubled, I make one long loaf in my favorite bread pan and one round artisan loaf in a dutch oven.

Mix & let set overnight in bowl on your kitchen counter that you’ve covered over with a towel.

You don’t even have to mix it super well. It doesn’t need to be like true dough.

But you do need to be sure to leave enough starter to be a thick layer on the bottom of your jar. I take this opportunity every week to switch my sourdough starter over to a new, clean, wide-mouth Mason jar. I’ve let it sit in the same jar a few weeks at a time but always regretted how difficult it was to clean the caked-on mess.

What I do on baking morning

In the morning, you’ll find your dough is filling up much more of the bowl. You may also find it’s gotten a little “crusty” in spots on the top. If so, you can lay a wet towel on the dough for 10-20 minutes to soften it up. It doesn’t always “work” and that’s totally fine. There’s no problem with using the dough with a few little crusty spots in it.

Add these ingredients:

1 tb sugar (I use maple sugar or this pure cane sugar)

2 1/2 tsp salt (this salt is my favorite)

1 cup of flour (I like this flour but I get my wheat berries here)

Add up to 1 more cup of flour if needed. Knead just until all combined and nice texture; not too sticky.

You can use any sugar and any flour you would like, btw. I’ve gotten more picky about my sugars and flour over the years. I will use all-natural maple sugar or this pure cane sugar (I buy it at my local Aldis) and mill my own flour, which I often use in a 1:1 ratio with this flour. I love my grain mill. It does an amazing job and looks gorgeous on my counter. See my grain mil right here, or you can check it out on Amazon too.

But sourdough with fresh flour is a whole new ballgame, so definitely check out my tips: Sourdough with Fresh Milled Flour

If you want to use fresh milled flour you will have the most nutritious bread possible. I’ve priced around and tried different varieties. I am most happy with the wheat berries that happen to also be the most economical; that doesn’t happen often in life!

I order these wheat berries for bread, and these wheat berries for baking pastries and cookies and such.

But fresh milled flour is never necessary for amazing sour dough bread. In fact, any flour and any sugar you have on hand will be just fine.

Roll dough lightly in flour if still a tad sticky, then place in bowl twice it’s size, that you’ve prepared with a thin layer of oil (I spray on olive oil using this wonderful tool), and cover bowl with a towel (or plastic wrap that you spray underneath, so the rising dough won’t stick to it). Unlike other homemade breads, there’s no need to set your bowl in a draft-free area.

Granted, in colder areas, like my drafty old kitchen, it will take longer to rise–up to 3-4 hours–but it will have more of that delicious sourdough flavor the longer it takes to rise.

But you could do things differently

My oldest daughter (the Mechanical Engineer), Logan, happens to be quite an engineer of bread too, and she likes to do everything up to this point the day before she’ll be baking her bread. Then this rise she’ll let go even longer and slower, overnight in the fridge.

She also isn’t a fan of having her sourdough on her small counter area in her small kitchen, so Logan keeps her dough in the fridge until the day before she wants to start a new loaf. Then she feeds it a cup or more of flour with enough water to make a nice consistency (more watery than my pancake-batter consistency I go for) early that morning, before going to work, and again the same amount at night, and it’s ready to be used the next day.

I call my slow-and-steady starter the country starter and her fast-and-quick version the city starter. (She does live and work in Boston, so it’s appropriate.)

What I do on baking afternoon

When it’s about 1.5x in size, it’s time to divide your dough. (Sourdough doesn’t double. Or if it does, it’s probably overproofed.)

Simply jiggle the dough out of the bowl and onto your counter (believe it or not, there shouldn’t be a need for flour on your counter, but dust some on if you find you need it). I divide my double-batch of dough into two pieces, one about 1/4 of the overall amount and one about 3/4.

But if you’re just doing a single loaf, no need to divide your dough.

Turn bowl over and plop dough onto counter. Divide. Then gently flatten both sections of dough separately, using light finger or knuckle pressure. Create two “balls” by pulling a top “corner” in, pressing down, and rotating your circle of dough 90 degrees. Keep doing this until your dough is no longer stretchy, about 10-12 pulls/turns. You now have a nice ball of dough, which will lead to a firmer, airy loaf of bread.

Turn the balls over and lightly dust w flour. Cover each with a towel and let rest for 10 minutes. (This is called a “bench rest.”)

After 10 minutes, smooch each into rectangle the right length for your pan (or just a square for an artisan loaf that will be baked in a dutch oven).

If you’re more of a visual person, see the whole bread-making process right here in my instagram highlights.

I then make a kind of “house” shape then roll the dough, from the pointed “roof,” down, firmly pressing the dough together with each roll. I will pinch the seam and/or pull the log or circle of dough along the counter to try to eliminate a seam.

For an artisan loaf, I spray a medium-sized pyrex bowl with oil. (I love this oil sprayer that allows me to use pure olive oil instead of chemical-laden aerosol cooking spray.)

Then cover in a dusting of flour. For the long loaf, I get out the right sized parchment paper. (Yes, I reuse my parchment paper again and again.)

Meanwhile preheat your bread pan(s) at 425. (For me, this is a cast iron dutch oven and this ceramic loaf pan that I happen to be in love with.)

I place my ball into its prepared bowl, seem side up. And I place my long log on parchment paper inside of the lid of my ceramic bread baker. (While the bottom of the pan is preheating.) I cover the bowl and lid with a kitchen towel and set them both in a draft-free area for about 1/2 hour.

I know it’s done rising when a gentle finger poke doesn’t bounce back. 

Place your ball of dough on parchment paper, sized to fit your dutch oven, and score. (See below for more about scoring.)

Then, using the paper to lift it easily, plop the ball of dough in your preheated dutch oven, and place lid on pan.

Lift the long loaf out of the lid it’s been rising in, place it (on its parchment paper) into the hot bread pan, and cover with top.

Bake both on center rack at 425 for 20 minutes. Then remove lids and leave an additional 10 minutes or so, until crust is done. 

Watch Every Step of the Process

I documented my process, from starter to bread, one day on my instagram stories and saved the whole bread-making process right here if you’d like to watch.

While you’re there please say “hi” and follow my page. I find instagram to be my favorite “hang out,” and would love to see you there.

The Only Hard Step in the Process

Then comes possibly the hardest step of the entire process…

Wait.

Don’t give into your temptation to cut into that wonderful smelling loaf right away. If you do, you will have doughy, squishy bread. Wait 20 minutes and you’ll be greeted with a firm yet airy piece of bread that you will be quite certain is a taste directly from heaven.

Your Questions About Making Sourdough Bread (without discard)

Yesterday, when I was making our loaves for the week ahead, I had this crazy idea that I would invite folks on instagram to join in and be a part of the process as the day unfolded. I wasn’t expecting it to be such a popular thing! So I saved the stories to a sourdough highlight for you to check them out anytime, and then I pulled this article together to give everyone answers to all the questions I was flooded with. Such as…

Why bench rest the dough?

A few of you asked if the bench rest is really necessary. I’m not an expert by any means, but from what I’ve read, this little nap gives the gluten in the dough time to catch it’s breath, so to speak, and recover, which means it can reform the protein chains that are the overall structure of your bread.

Why don’t I need to add yeast?

Crazy enough, sour dough starter captures natural yeast from the air in your home.

Will my sourdough starter get moldy?

A sourdough starter should never develop mold. I’ve had mine for years and never had a problem with mold. If you do see mold in your starter, from what I understand the cause can only be one of two things: a not-clean container or spoon was used to start your starter or your flour source may be contaminated

Why is it sour tasting?

2. I didn’t perfect this recipe.

Kayla, my homesteader-at-heart-since-she-was-a-little-girl spent years perfecting this. I only took over the efforts this winter when she announced she would be spending the long New England winter on the Gulf of Mexico with Hayley and Jordyn, her sister who was interning at the Texas State Aquarium.

While I had no control over the quietness in the house this winter, I had total control of the sourdough operation. And I was shocked at how much I loved it. (The bread making. Not so much the quietness.)

And don’t forget I list out all my favorite kitchen items right here–you know, the ones I’d hate to have to do without, and yes, my ceramic bread pan is #1 on my list.

 

Want more sourdough?

Sourdough Pizza Crust

Sourdough Bread Bowls

Go here to find out my favorite sourdough “tool” of all time, as well as all the items I wouldn’t want to be without in my farmhouse kitchen.

And other links you’ll love:

How to make real butter.

A review of my three favorite cookbooks of all time.

Make your own giant cookie that the kids will love.

How a homesteader makes French toast.

Products I LOVE that can turn every kitchen into a homestead-kind-of kitchen.

 

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Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands. I Thessalonians 4:11

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Pin this for later!

Click on the image below to pin this post.

 

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

 

 

 

The post How I make sourdough bread without discard first appeared on Souly Rested.