So what we're going to do now is,
is we're going to show you how to make some sourdough bread.
Sourdough has got quite fashionable and trendy.
It's on a lot of restaurant menus.
Sourdough is trending since about 5000 B.C.
It's the oldest form of leavened bread.
So while we think we've a big tradition with soda bread,
your granny might have made it -
this is what her granny's granny used to make.
This is what we're all trying to get back to.
So the big revolution, the big future in food,
the future in bread, is about going back. Back to the past.
And this is what we're trying to get back to.
Beautiful, beautiful sourdoughs,
naturally fermented, with our seeded sourdough
a bit of malthouse.
As I say, you could have a hundred different types.
In order to make sourdough bread,
is to make your sourdough starter, or your sourdough culture.
The process is very, very simple.
It's simply just a mix of flour and water.
So we've got 50 grams of flour
and to that we're adding 50 mls of water.
Stir it together.
And that is simply it.
Now what we're going to do is to leave that to sit out
in your kitchen, just gently covered,
ambient temperature, overnight, for about 12 hours.
So at the moment, we're surrounded by wild yeast.
It's a good strain of bacteria, it exists everywhere.
You breathe it in everyday.
And then basically over a process
of using simply just flour and just water,
it eventually picks up that bacteria in the air.
And that bacteria starts to ferment. It starts to live off
the protein within the flour, so it starts to rise and collapse.
Realistically it takes about 7 or 10 days to make it.
But for a lot of people, I know,
I'm not making a loaf of bread if it takes 7 or 10 days to make it,
but the idea is, once you get up and going once,
that's virtually about it.
As long as you don't use it all, you'll never run out.
So you only have to do it one time in your life.
So we'll mix it together, flour and water.
About 12 hours later, it looks a little bit like this.
So at this stage, we would be due to mix this
with another 50 grams of flour and another 50 mls of water.
Stir it together and that's it.
Again, we let it sit overnight.
Day 3 we repeat the process.
Then on Day 4, we can already see
it's starting to become lovely and bubbly.
You can see all these little bubbles coming lovely and active.
And this is the sign of life starting to form.
This is exactly what we're looking for.
It's starting to ferment.
It's all the good things in life - wine, beer, cheese, bread.
All based on the same principle.
So you will find it starts to take on a sweet, vinegary kind of smell.
But don't worry, that's exactly what we're looking for.
But if you find a little liquid starting to come away from it,
don't worry about that either, just put it straight back in.
So we're going to give this another day.
And we're going to feed it again - one more time.
And by the time it's ready,
most likely on about Day 7.
Don't worry if you find that maybe,
on Day 6 or Day 7, it's not exactly there yet.
Don't be afraid to give it an extra day.
Because it will differ, depending on the environment it was kept in.
So if it needs an extra day, just give it an extra day.
But now we've got our lovely active sourdough.
It's got that lovely vinegary smell.
You can see it's been kind of rising up the glass.
This started about here earlier on and now it's climbed up to here.
So it'll continue to rise
and then it will drop back down.
So at this stage, it's basically ready to go.
Well, if I'm completely honest, this is Day 2.
This is Day 4.
And this is Year 9.
I've had this for 9 years.
So as long as I don't use it all, I'll never run out.
So all I'll simply do, for example after we make our bread today,
I will have 200 grams left over.
I will simply stir in 200 flour, 200 water,
and tomorrow, it's ready to go again.
Because I keep mine at room temperature,
I've to feed mine everyday.
But for the home-baker, who might only bake once a week,
or at weekends when you've a bit more time,
it can become quite an expensive pet to keep if you feed it every day.
So what you can simply do is keep yours in the fridge.
Because it's based on bacteria, cold won't kill it.
It'll just slow it down.
So for example, you're going to be baking on a Saturday morning.
Take it out of your fridge on a Friday, just leave it sit
in your kitchen to take the chill off it.
That evening, say whatever weight you have.
For example, 200 grams.
Stir in 200 flour, 200 water leave it sit in your kitchen.
Next morning it's going to be lovely and bubbly.
lovely and active, ready to make your bread.
Take what you need to make your bread,
whatever is left over, back in your fridge, that's it.
So you've a little once a week cycle.
You find it gets better with age - the flavour starts to develop.
So even if you're not baking,
you still have to feed it, because technically it is alive.
So if you're building up too much,
just bin some away, just keep back enough to keep it going.
And the easiest ratio to work off,
is whatever weight you have here,
same weight of flour, same weight of water.
Could not be simpler.
Now, in order to make our sourdough bread,
we've got our sourdough starter. As I say, it takes about a week.
Get it going today, you'll be ready by next weekend.
Ready to go, perfect to make your bread.
If not, you could always
get down to your local baker.
Most real bread bakeries will happily give you some starter.
If you check out realbreadireland.org
it's got all the real bread bakers across Ireland.
And most of them like myself, are happy to give you a little starter,
if you can't get your own going.
So with this one, we're going to make enough for two loaves.
The great thing about this is we can bake two loves.
We can pop one in the freezer and have one to try fresh in the day.
And sourdough comes back great from the freezer.
So we've get 800 grams of strong flour.
To this...
we're going to add 460 mls,
or 460 grams of water.
We're taking about 10 grams of salt.
Salt is an essential ingredient.
Salt acts as a natural flavour enhancer.
We've got our flour, we've got our water,
we've got our salt and then finally,
we just need a little bit of our sourdough starter.
So we're using 320 grams.
Just make sure we don't use it all.
Like you would any other recipe, just add your yeast straight in.
And in this case, our sourdough starter.
Once your ingredients are all in,
just start bringing everything together.
So once the dough roughly comes together,
just dump it,
straight out on the table.
The gluten forms once we add a liquid.
At the moment, the gluten is quite weak.
So we want to build up the strength of our dough,
by what we call kneading.
The idea of kneading is you simply stretch
and work the dough.
So you will find the dough goes a little bit wet
and a little bit sticky.
Generally everyone's reaction at home is to immediately
reach for some flour and keep adding in there.
But if you keep adding flour, the dough will quite happily soak it up.
And then the more it soaks it up, the heavier the dough becomes
and the tighter your bread will be.
So when it comes to kneading, you will get a lot of recipes
suggesting the best technique, how best to knead.
To be honest, the one piece of advice I give most people
is think about somebody you don't like, and just go for it!
So I tend to use the heel of my hand, a little short stretch,
and then use my fingers.
Just pin the dough between here and here and hook it back.
And if you can pick yourself up a little dough scraper,
absolutely great.
It's almost like a little extension of your hand.
Bring it all back together again and keep working away.
So most recipes will suggest how long to need for.
Most of them will say 8 to 10 minutes.
Most of them are lying, but the thing is,
it's very difficult for a recipe to be exact.
Because everybody is a little bit different.
Some people are just stronger than others, some days you're tired.
The dough will always tell you when it's ready.
There's a thing called the window-pane effect.
You can see it's getting elastic, it's getting there.
But as I stretch and work it out, it's just ripping, it's tearing.
And that's just the dough telling me it's not ready.
It just needs a little more work. So just keep on going.
And if you do have a mixer at home, feel free to use it.
The dough hook will do exactly the same thing as your hands are doing.
You're going to feel the dough starting to change.
You can even see already, how beautiful and silky
how lovely and smooth the dough has become.
Like you saw earlier, when we tested it initially,
it just kept ripping, it kept tearing. So we'll take a little oil
in your hands. It'll stop the dough from sticking to you.
And nice and gently stretch the dough, working it out.
You can see the shadows, the membrane behind it.
It's exactly what we're looking for.
So earlier, that just ripped and tore.
But now, that's holding. It's elastic.
It's got the strength we need, that's exactly what we're looking for.
So bring your dough back together.
Back into one piece. Into your bowl.
And now I'm going to let it prove.
With sourdough however, because it's a more natural process,
everything tends to happen much, much slower.
So where most yeast recipes need to prove for about an hour,
this one, we're going to be looking at about three hours.
So you need to leave it plenty of time.
So we're going to let this prove for three hours.
So when you come back to it,
you'll be looking at something like this.
What we'll be doing now, is we're simply knocking our dough back.
Because as much as we say the longer you prove it the better,
you don't want to over-prove your bread.
Simply take it out of your bowl
and try and make it into a round ball.
And again, don't over-think it.
By making it into a ball, you'll have simply
knocked it back knocked all the air from it.
So you're kind of back to where you would have been three hours ago.
So now, what we need to do at this stage,
is we need to shape our dough.
So with the quantity we made, it gives us the perfect portion
to make two lovely sized loaves.
So when we're shaping our breads, we use proving baskets.
Because it's going to be proving for another three hours,
it would just slowly start to prove out,
and go very, very flat.
So by using the basket, it gives the dough support.
It encourages it to take on that shape, so instead of proving out,
it proves up. But if you don't have a basket,
you could use absolutely anything.
A tin, a tray, a box, a bowl.
It's simply something that's going to support and help your dough out.
And probably, I'm sure all of us have...
a Pyrex dish at home.
If you don't have it, your mum has, your gran has.
They're always kicking around everywhere.
We take a little flour and dust it all over.
Coating it with a little coating of flour,
will stop the dough from sticking.
So the best thing to do is simply take a clean tea-towel.
You could use your mixing bowl, or whatever you like.
Pop your tea-towel in.
And again just a good generous coating of flour.
Just to make sure that the dough won't stick.
So all that's left to do now is to shape our dough.
So no matter what we're shaping,
we always kind of start from a round base.
Again, try not to use too much flour.
Just a very gentle coating if you find your dough is a little soft
or a little bit sticky. Simply flip your dough over.
Take all your little edges and push them down to the centre.
Go to the next one.
And then overlap the last.
Round and round you go and you can see
it naturally starting to curve around.
So I flip the dough over.
Put your hands out and simply drag them forward.
You'll find the dough lifts up.
Turn it 45 degrees and go again.
Keep repeating, each time
the surface of the dough is getting that little bit tighter.
A little roll around.
And now we have a perfect little loaf ready to go.
And pop it into our basket upside down.
And it's into our little Pyrex dish with our tea-towel.
And just so it doesn't stick,
a little dusting of flour.
And now with the tea-towel, you simply
tuck it straight in.
So we just tucked our dough in and we're going to let it prove again.
It needs to prove for about another three to three and a half hours.
The great thing about this though is, at this stage,
you could go and put this straight in the fridge.
And it can sit there all night long, no problem whatsoever.
Because, with our sourdough, it's moving lovely and slowly.
And some yeasted breads would tend to overprove in the fridge.
Sourdough really lends itself to be proven overnight.
So we'll leave it there all night. First thing tomorrow morning,
we'll come back, take our dough out
turn it straight out and into our oven
and we'll bake it away.
Our sourdough has been proving, they've had a second prove now.
We had them shaping. We had one in our lovely proving basket.
And our second one in our lovely Pyrex dish.
So at this stage they are ready to bake.
Your dough should have a nice little bounce to it.
You should be able to touch it and there's no fear of it collapsing.
So if you kind of touch it and felt the whole thing was going to drop,
you've overproved it, so the idea is at least you know for next time,
catch it a little sooner. The idea is we catch it on the rise.
Have your baking tray ready.
If you're using a proving basket or lucky to have one at home,
so simply like a sandcastle, just turn your dough straight out.
So you can see all that beautiful pattern
which the dough picks up from the basket.
That's what gives this dough a lot of its traditional markings.
So then we've also got our lovely Pyrex dish.
It's a great way to improvise at home.
It's been tucked in for the last couple of hours.
We're going to gently waken it up.
And all you do, very simply,
just in case it's going to stick,
we'll put a little bit of flour on our dough.
So we take our lid, you pop your lid on.
And you literally just flip it upside down.
So take it off.
Nice and gently, just remove your flour and tea-towel.
Most professional ovens are fitted with steam.
The idea being for the first 8 to 10 minutes of your bake,
the dough is still rising.
So by having steam in the oven, it allows the dough to open up.
And it stops a crust from forming.
Because often what can happen if you don't use steam,
curst forms, the dough hasn't finished rising,
and sometimes it can't break through the surface.
It gets a bulge out the side
because it'll look for any weakness in the dough.
Or sometimes it won't rise at all. So by having steam in the oven
it protects the dough and allows it to continue to open up.
That's also what helps to create your lovely little crust.
This is why the Pyrex dish is so great, it's so brilliant.
Because no matter how crappy your oven is,
you don't even have to steam it, because basically
once we pop the lid on, it's going to basically self steam.
It creates its own little chamber.
And it'll steam the bread and does a perfect job for us.
Before we do that though, we're going to score our bread.
It dates back to central ovens.
Each village would have one, everyone would help maintain it.
So the only way to tell your bread apart is how you mark it.
It's called a baker's signature.
We use a razor blade.
The thing to remember when you're using it, it's not a bread knife,
so don't start doing this. Be nice and confident.
So a really sharp knife at home if you can.
When you're in full control...
And don't be afraid to cut into your dough.
Just make sure you cut all the way through.
So by scoring it, as well as aesthetics
it also helps you to control how the dough rises
and gives the dough somewhere to go.
So when it comes to baking your dough, don't be afraid
to turn the temperature of your oven up.
We all have a tendency to cook absolutely everything at 180.
It's like the universal setting on an oven.
But with bread, we need those good high temperatures.
So really crank it up. So you're looking at a minimum
of 230 degrees. We need that high temperature
to create that lovely, lovely crust.
So a great way we can create steam at home,
is by as we pop our bread in,
and pop in our little Pyrex dish.
Once you pre-heat the oven,
just turn it right up, put in a roasting tray
and pre-heat it and all I'm doing is taking some hot water...
Which is going to release that lovely blast of steam
into our oven which is going to help your bread rise. 360 00:15:54,879 --> 00:15:50,640