Breadmaker Sourdough

Baking Sourdough bread in the bread oven is convenient for me.  All I do is place the ingredients into the pan, set and forget.  The bread is more dense in texture than a loaf baked in free form but it's great for toast.

About the starter:

This bread uses a 100% hydration sourdough starter.  That is, you refresh your starter with equal amounts by weight of bread flour and water.  I set my starter up after each loaf by adding 150g each of flour and filtered water to what ever is left of the last batch.  Remember you only need a little of the old starter to innoculate the next batch but sometimes I add a little more flour and water to make up a larger batch.  Sit it somewhere warm until it doubles and then store in the fridge.

Manually programming your bread oven:

My bread oven is a Breville Ultimate Baker's Oven Series III which has manual settings available.  If your bread oven doesn't allow you to program it, then you will have to adjust my recipe and do some of the work manually.

To program the oven, turn it on and press the "manual" button.  Press it again to enter the edit mode and program the settings below using the up/down arrows.  Press the manual button to save the setting and step through to the next setting.  Press the button again at the end and you should hear a double beep.  Your settings are saved and will be there each time you use the oven.

Total cooking time is 5 hours and 22 minutes.  If you are baking overnight, you can use the delay to extend the baking time.  Timing the baking for when you are up and about in the morning allows you to remove the loaf from the pan before it softens with condensation.

It's important that the paddle is moving easily both around and if you have a collapsing paddle, that it moves freely up and down. 

Ingredients:

• • 300g sourdough starter

  • 300g filtered water

  • 500g bread flour

  • 14g salt

Method:

• 1. Set your bread pan on your scales and zero it out.

  2. measure the starter and water into the pan.  Stir to combine.

  3. measure the flour onto the top of the mix (but don't stir).  Make a small depression in the top of the flour and measure the salt into the depression so that the salt does not make contact with the liquid.

  4. set your pan into the bread oven and press the "manual" button and then "start".  (Use the delay function if you need to, before you press "start")

  5. after baking has finished, remove the bread from the pan (you may need to shake rigorously) and allow the loaf to cool before storing in a plastic bag.

Tips:

The bread is easier to slice the next day and will keep for a week at room temperature.