Kitchen /

CountrySourDutchOvenLoaf

The is the bread recipe that the folks at Tabor Bread shared with the class, back in February 2020. Endless thanks and gratitude to Tabor Bread and the wonderful instructor and helpers that made that class happen. It changed my bread baking life. --Mark

TABOR BREAD

PORTLAND, OREGON

Using the Cast Iron Dutch Oven Method
From the Tabor Bread Kitchen
Designed for Your Home Kitchen

Your Guide to Sourdough Bread Baking

Starting off on the right foot

The initial stages in making bread tend to be the most important. What ingredients you use, your temperatures, your tools, and how you put everything together will set the stage for the development of your bread. The later stages in bread making are mostly waiting around to see if your initial steps did a good job--the job you wanted them to do. If you know your process and follow it well, while being attentive to your dough's needs, you can be pretty sure to come out with really delicious, beautiful bread. It's all about setting yourself up for success. Here are the basic concepts we're working with in our own baking process:

Fermentation, Leavening

We don't use commercial yeast at the bakery. Instead, we use a sourdough culture from wild yeasts, called a starter, to leaven our breads. We like the natural process and taste this lends our breads, and we don't think it makes sense to us a commercially produced yeast when there is so much natural leavening at our disposal right in our flours and environment! Naturally leavened breads are far more complex in taste because of all the different flavor chemicals produced in the fermentation process. And fermenting your doughs naturally helps those wild yeasts, bacteria and enzymes to break down the tough carbs and proteins even before the loaf is baked. It's why our bread is much easier to digest than many commercial breads available, and one reason we believe in the health of whole grain sourdough as a part of our diets.

Caring for your starter, When it is ready to use

Your starter is a culture of wild yeasts that feed off of the nutrients in flour and multiply. Their life cycle produces the gases that leaven our breads. If you bake every few days, you can keep your starter on the counter as long as you refresh it often (about every 12 hours). For more infrequent baking, refer to the Starter Feeding Guide provided further on. Before you use your starter in a recipe, look for the signs that it's ready: active bubbles (some may even pop when you jiggle the container), yummy apple cider smells and volume. If it collapses a little, that's okay. As long as it hasn't gone flat or have an extremely acidic smell/taste it will have enough food in your dough to rejuvenate and leaven your bread. I always taste my starter--when it is ripe to use it tastes like something sweet and sour that I would definitely want to flavor my food with. And remember, if you kill you starter (which is pretty hard to do) you can always get some more from us.

Fresh Flours, Quality Ingredients

We mill on-site using our big stone mill. This means that our flours are as fresh a product as you can get anywhere in town. They retain a lot more of their nutrition and flavor than commercial flours. It also means we can assure we are using the whole grain in our breads--we're not sifting ANYthing ? out. Think of fresh-ground coffee bought next-day from the roaster vs. pre-ground store bought coffee out of a can. Grains are the same way. We retain all kinds of healthy fats and minerals and flavor components by milling on-site, and that translates to better bread.

Autolyse

At the bakery we autolyse all of our breads. This means we mix together just the flour and water and then let it sit for a period of time before adding the levain and salt. This helps to fully hydrate the flour and also begins to wake up the enzymes in the flour (which in the long-run translates to a more complexly flavored loaf). For 100% whole grain dough, a longer aurolyse is beneficial (40 minutes - 1 hr), but for other doughs an autolyse of 20-30 minutes is sufficient.

Mixing

Mixing helps form the gluten strands that create the structure of dough made with wheat flour. Gluten is a protein (made of two other proteins, glutenin and gliadin) which forms long chains that stretch and stick together. You want your bread to have strong gluten protein strands that can stretch without breaking--these strands capture air to give your loaf the volume and open crumb we're looking for. We know we have mixed our dough well when it is a consistent color/hydration and when it has strength--the elastic nature of the gluten begins to show itself during mixing.

Bulk Ferment, Folds

After our doughs are mixed and we can tell the gluten has started to form, we put them into oiled containers and give them a series of "folds" over a longer period of time--usually several hours. This period is called the "bulk ferment," because the bulk mass of dough is fermenting together in very large containers. Later, we will divide them into their own individual loaf shapes, and they will ferment more on their own. This series of folds is the second step in forming the gluten. Folding is beneficial because it's gentle on the dough and helps it to form its gluten network on its own instead of the more intensive process of kneading. The more we can let the dough do its thing on its own timeline the better bread we get. Folding also helps to regulate temperature throughout the dough, and it redistributes the wild yeasts, enzymes and bacteria to new areas of the dough where there's more food for them.

Preshaping, Shaping

After mixing, bulk fermenting and final folds our dough gets dumped onto the bread table (the "bench") and chopped up to be shaped. We preshape our doughs into rounds, then let them rest on the table (this is called the bench rest). This preshape helps to further knit the gluten into a more orderly net, and the bench rest allows this net to relax and become more extensible (able to be stretched). This is very helpful when we want to do the final shaping of our loaf. Because the dough has relaxed we can apply appropriate tension to the surface of our loaf while shaping without the worry of the dough ripping. We also want to make sure to let the dough rest long enough in between preshaping and shaping to relax so that we won't tear the surface of our loaf (20-40 minutes is usually sufficient). After shaping our loaves we put them into baskets or on couches (linens) for their overnight time in the refrigerator.

*** To do final shaping: Dust the top of your piece with flour, scrape the dough up off the table and invert it so the smooth, floured side is down and the ragged side is facing up. Now, take the left side and gently stretch it about halfway across your piece, pat down to adhere, then do the same with the right side. Now take the top of your piece and gently stretch it down about halfway, and do the same with the bottom. Now that you have it gathered into a tighter mass, invert it back so that the smooth side is facing up and the gathered side is down on the table. Gently round your dough, using the table as resistance, until there's a smooth, tight surface. If the surface of your dough is ripping, it's probably being over-handled - let it rest for about 10 minutes and then gently try again.

Proofing

Once the loaves are shaped and in their baskets, we leave them out at room temperature to proof for around 40 minutes (sometimes longer in the winter or shorter in the summer). Proofing helps relax the dough and gives those air bubbles time to distribute themselves evenly throughout the loaf. A lot of "oven spring' or final expansion happens in the bake, so we want our loaves to be relaxed and nearly fully proofed before throwing them in the oven. If we don't proof our dough long enough our loaves will tear and burst open during the bake, and we don't want that. We also don't want our dough to be overproofed. Overproofing leads to collapsed loaves with a gummy, sticky layer on the bottom of the crumb. This happens when the yeasts and other bacteria have exhausted their food supply before the bake and therefore can't create more gases from their life cycle during the bake.

Retarding

Once our loaves are almost perfectly proofed--relaxed in their baskets, gassy, but not over-inflated or collapsing--it's time to "retard" them or throw them in the fridge until the bake the next morning. This ends up being about 20 hours for us, but it will be anywhere from 12-24 hours for our class loaf. I recommend working with your schedule to find what works for you. For me, an overnight retard works well--I can bake my bread off the next morning and it's fresh for the day. The longer the retard, the more your dough will ferment. This long fermentation time adds flavor to your bread.

Baking in a Dutch Oven

The most important factors in baking off your bread are a consistent, high-heat source, and moisture. If you've done all your other steps well the bake off should be the most straightforward part of the process. Since most people don't have access to the kind of heat-retaining bread oven that we have here at the bakery, the next best thing for home bakers is the dutch oven method. It's also the method that our owner, Tissa Stein, myself, and countless other home bakers have used to great success for years and years. It's just about fool proof. Baking your bread in a cast iron dutch oven means that you will have a really hot surface to bake on (one which will stay hot throughout the bake) and one that will trap the moisture that is in your bread. Keeping your crust moist during the initial part of the bake helps ensure that it can expand as much as it needs to while the cell walls are setting, without bursting open in and unsightly way. We slash the tops of our loaves, not just because it looks pretty, but because this gives the bread a defined outlet for all the expansion and steam, so the rest of the crust stays smooth and consistent. We bake in an oven with falling temperature to mimic a traditional wood-fired oven, which loses its heat over the course of the bake. We also uncover our loaves part-way through the bake to ensure a beautiful, caramelly brown color. We know our loaves are done when we turn them over on the table and can tap the bottom to get a nice, hollow :thunk: Now we just wait for them to cool a bit on a rack and we can dig in and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

** Information provided by Sarah Black, adapted by Jessica Larriva

Our Steps Made (Super) Easy

measure flours

mix flours with water for autolyse

add starter on top without mixing in

cover, and let autolyse for 20-30 minutes

mix dough with starter and salt

fold dough at end of mix, this will be the first fold

wait 30 minutes, do second fold

wait 30 minutes, do third fold

wait 30 minutes, do fourth fold

wait 30 minutes, then flip dough out onto table or board

dust dough lightly in flour and preshape using bench scraper

let dough relax during this bench rest (20-40 min)

do final shaping, and put into floured basket seam side up

proof at room temp for about 40 minutes - 1.5 hrs

put in fridge (retard dough) overnight or for 12-24 hours

preheat oven with dutch oven in it to 500 degrees for at least a half hour

flip dough out of basket onto a sheet of parchment paper

make a slash in top of loaf with knife or scissors

use serious oven mitts for SAFETY

pull dutch oven out onto a hot pad, carefully lower loaf and parchment into the bottom half of the dutch oven

put top of dutch oven back on, put back in oven, bake for 20 minutes

take lid off dutch oven, turn oven down to 450 degrees and bake for 20-25 minutes more

carefully flip loaf out of dutch oven onto counter and do thunk test

let cool on wire rack or stove top burner

cut when cooled and enjoy!

You did it! Congrats, Baker!

Starter Feeding Guide

How do you know when to feed your starter, how long will it keep and when is it ready to use?

When you feed your starter you will be discarding all but a few tablespoons of your previous starter and mixing in equal parts flour and water. If you're baking frequently, make sure to add enough flour and water to suit your recipe and have a few tablespoons left over. For example, '''our recipe calls for one cup of starter, so you will want to mix in ½ cup flour to ½ cup water to about 3 tablespoons of previous active starter'''. This way you can use one cup of your starter in the recipe and have a few tablespoons left over to create more starter with. Always feed that little bit of starter left over right away so you can keep your culture active. Go ahead and discard the rest of your "old starter after each feeding (or use it in pancakes!).

Remember, whenever you feed or "refresh your starter, you will want to let it sit on your counter at room temp for a few hours, until you start to see some bubbles and activity. At that point you can use it to bake with or put it in your fridge for later use.

Feeding to bake every day or with no planning: If you are baking every day and want your culture to stay active to bake with at the drop of a hat, feed it every 12 hours and keep on your counter. Your starter should be ready for you to use without much pre-planning this way, but you will go through more flour and water in the refreshing process.
Feeding to bake at least once a week, if you can plan a full day in advance: If you can plan your baking a little bit more you can keep your starter in your fridge. This keeps your starter in a dormant state and prevents much "waste" of flour in unnecessary feedings. Take out your starter and refresh it twice before use, letting it sit at room temp.
Feeding to bake very infrequently/storage: If you don't plan to bake for a while or will be going out of town, feed your starter with half the amount of water (but full amount of flour). This will make a much stiffer starter, which you can keep in your fridge for about a month without it dying. When you come back to it, let it come to room temp and refresh it as normal for at least 3 cycles before trying to bake with it.
Remember, always let your starter sit at room temp for a couple hours after refreshment, even if it's going back in the fridge. This gets the culture activity started.

* Keep in mind that your dough will still need to retard overnight or for 10-24 hours, so planning ahead is still key!

Country Sour Dutch Oven Loaf

Ingredient	Volume Measure	Weight in grams*	Baker's %**
Water (85 to 95 degrees F)	2 cups	430 g	83%
Hard White Flour	2 cups	290 g	56%
All Purpose Flour	1 1/2 cups	195 g	38%
Dark Northern Rye Flour	1/4 cup	30 g	6%
Levain	1 cup	300 g	58%
Kosher Salt	2 tsp	12 g	2%

* Weights are approximate, and may change based on how you sift and measure your flour, what salt you use, and how dense your levain is. Try to be consistent in your measuring method and you will have more consistent results.

** Baker's percentage is by weight only. One cup of flour and one cup of water are not necessarily 100% to 100% in baker's math. This is a tool for you to use if you have a home scale and can weigh your ingredients. It helps with increasing or decreasing your batch amount. If you don't have a home scale, stick to doubling or halving your recipe. For a further lesson in baker's percentage, visit:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/bakers-percentage.html