Bread out of the oven
(Photo: Bonnie Ferron)

Overnight Sourdough Bread

My variation of a recipe from Hostess at Heart


October 7, 2021

This is my variation of a recipe from Hostess at Heart (https://hostessatheart.com). It's the easiest sourdough bread recipe I've found. Time does the kneading for you.

You'll need sourdough starter, a kitchen scale, parchment paper, and a dutch oven.

For one large boule:

225 grams bubbly sourdough starter

430 grams filtered water at room temperature

750 grams organic bread flour

14 grams fine sea salt

In a large bowl, squelch all of the ingredients together briefly (just a minute is enough) with your hands. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a tea towel and let the dough rest for 30 minutes.

Stretch and fold the dough into the bowl for about a minute. Take the dough out, clean your bowl and spray it with nonstick baking spray. Place the dough back in the bowl. Spray the underside of the plastic wrap and recover the bowl with it and the tea towel. Leave it on the counter overnight. By morning it will have at least doubled in volume.

Place parchment paper on the counter. Spray with baking spray. Tip the dough out onto the parchment paper, being careful not to puncture the bubbles that help your bread rise.

Using a scraper dusted with flour, scrape under the outside of the dough to tighten it up into a boule. Loosely cover the dough with your sprayed plastic wrap and a tea towel. Let it rest for 10 minutes. At 10 minutes, put your lidded dutch oven in the oven and preheat it to 475 degrees. I use an old Le Creuset pan size D. When the oven is heated (mine takes twenty minutes) and your dough has rested for a total of 30 minutes, slash the dough with a sharp knife. Remove the pan from the oven, take off the lid, and carefully place the dough with the parchment paper into the pot. Replace the lid and place it in the oven.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for 25 minutes more. When nice and brown, remove the bread from the oven, tip it out and let it cool on a rack completely before slicing. Lovely for lunch the same day. Because there is so much bread for the two of us, we quarter the cooled bread and eat one quarter and freeze the other quarters individually. When we want bread for lunch, we pull out one quarter, open the freezer bag slightly, and let it thaw on the kitchen counter.

© Copyright 2021, Bonnie Ferron