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Sourdough Bread with Minimal Effort

Tim Blankers -

This recipe won't produce the tastiest bread. But it's still tasty. It won't produce the most beautiful oven spring. But it's still nice and fluffy. It is not what people on YouTube would recommend. But I don't care, I just want bread, this works for me. YMMV.

You need:

  • A Dutch Oven
  • A KitchenAid Heavy Duty 4.8L Mixer
  • Wartmann DH2206 Dehydrator
  • An active sourdough starter
  • Wheat flour with as high protein % as possible
  • Wheat flour whole grain with as high protein % as possible

The goal is to have a loaf of bread for tomorrow's lunch.

  1. In the morning: Feed the starter. I use 30g starter, 30g water, 30g rye flour. If it's cold (<19C) in the kitchen, the dehydrator on 20-25C could help
  2. 19:00: Put 250g flour, 250g whole grain and 350g water into the KitchenAid bowl. Cold tap water is fine. Mix with a wooden spatula into a ball, so all flour has absorbed some water.
  3. 19:30: Add 10g fine grain salt, and 60g starter. Feed starter again. Put bowl in KitchenAid machine with dough hook, 12 minutes on level 2.
  4. 19:45: Remove dough hook from bowl, shape dough into ball, add lid to bowl so it's almost airtight. Put bowl in dehydrator on 30C for 3 hours.
  5. 22:45: Remove bowl from dehydrator. Put dough gently on kitchen counter, shape it, and let it rest in a smaller bowl covered by kitchen towel overnight in the refrigerator.
  6. 07:00: Put on oven at 250C with the Dutch Oven in it, without the lid.
  7. 08:00: Take sourdough out of refrigerator, slide it on some baking paper, put it in Dutch Oven. Bake for 40 minutes.
  8. 08:40: Take bread out of the Dutch Oven, let it cool on a rack until lunch.
  9. 12:00: Enjoy!

Remarks:

  • The dehydrator is only used for keeping a constant temperature. My kitchen's temperature changes a lot, and I want consistent results. The lid is to make sure the sourdough doesn't actually dry out.
  • I take some shortcuts here and there to save on time and effort. Therefor it is very important to have a really active starter and buy flour with as high protein percentages as I can get.
  • Use the KitchenAid Heavy Duty edition, as the vertically raising mixer head is more stable than the cheaper Artisan pivoting mixer head.
  • The KitchenAid bowl fits exactly in the dehydrator if I take out all the trays.
  • I don't do folds during the bulk fermentation. I usually don't have time for that, and I still like the result without them.
  • I keep the lid on the Dutch Oven the entire time while the bread is in the oven. You could take it off and bake the last 5-10 minutes on lower temperature, but I find it not really worth it.