Make Your First Loaf

If you are new to sourdough, we are so excited to help you make your first loaf!!

There are 2 different methods we like to use.

The 1st one we call the "Full Method" and the 2nd one we call the "Short Cut Method."

FULL METHOD:

You will need a bowl, a scale, your ingredients, parchment paper and your KINDLED sourdough kit tools.

***Use a scale that has the "tare" button on it. That way after you put the bowl on your scale you can push the "tare" button and it will make the scale go back to zero so you can then weigh the starter. Repeat that for the other ingredients to get proper weights***

Here is the recipe we like to use!

Ingredients:

100 g starter

325 g water

500 g bread flour

10 g salt (We like Redmond Real Salt, but regular salt works too.)

1. Place your bowl on the scale and pour 100g of starter into the bowl.

2. Add 325 grams of water to the starter (we just use room temperature water) and mix it thoroughly together until all of the starter is dissolved into the water.

3. Add 500 grams of bread flour and 10 grams of salt.

4. Now use your large sourdough spoon from your KINDLED Sourdough Kit to mix the dough together. The consistency of the dough will be really thick. It will look rough, uneven, and a little clumpy and messy. The term that is used is "shaggy".

You just need to know that this beginning dough is not going to look like regular smooth looking dough like what you might picture for normal bread dough. This is totally normal and is how it should look.

5. Now cover this dough with a towel and put it in the oven with the oven light on for 1 hour. You are not turning the oven on. You are only turning the light in the oven on. Having the oven light on just makes the oven a little bit warmer.

6. Stretch and fold the dough every 30 minutes for a total of 4 times. Stretching and folding the dough just means using your hands to stretch the dough out and fold it back in. (Look up how to stretch and fold sourdough on youtube it will show you how to do it. It's not hard at all.)

After you have done the last stretch and fold, put the dough back in the oven for 3 hours.

7. Get out your KINDLED banneton basket. You can use it with or without the cloth insert. When you use it without the insert it gives you that classic spiral pattern around the edges of the bread but it can be a little harder to get the dough out of the basket when that time comes. It's important for the bread to come out smoothly as that can affect the finished product. If you are a beginner we suggest using the basket with the insert cloth as we have found that the dough is easier to work with that way.

Generously sprinkle flour on the bottom and sides of the banneton. This helps the dough not stick to the basket when it's time to dump out the dough.

8. Now get the dough out of the oven and sprinkle some flour on your counter top to cover about a 2 ft. wide area. The flour helps the dough not to stick to your counter top.

Use your KINDLED scraper tool to scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto your counter top. (On your scraper there is a side that is thin and more sharp and a side that is thicker and not as sharp. Use the thicker side when you want to scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto the counter top.)

9. Now you want to shape the dough into a loaf to put into the banneton. (We are not experts at this and there are different ways of doing it. You will find a lot of videos online about this but for now we will give one way to do it.)

Note: If you double the recipe to get 2 loaves out of the it you will want to use the thinner/sharper end of your KINDLED scraper to cut the dough in half so you can work with the two loaves separately.

For Oval Loaves:

Stretch the dough out flat into kind of a rectangle/square shape. (You're not trying to press or punch the air out of it or totally flatten it like pizza dough. You are just kind of gently pulling and stretching it out into a rectangle/square shape.)

Now fold the two sides in to meet up with each other in the middle and then roll the whole thing up kind of like you would a cinnamon roll. Now you can just kind of pinch each of the open ends together. It should now be in an oval shape.

Next you are going to take the thinner and sharper side of your KINDLED scraper and scoop underneath the dough and flip the dough over into your other hand so you can carefully lay the dough upside down into the banneton. The bottom will now be on the top, which is the part you can see. Pinch the dough together along the top as needed so it's not separating and coming undone.

For Round Loaves:

Now fold the two sides in to meet up with each other in the middle and then roll the whole thing up kind of like you would a cinnamon roll. Now we need to make the loaf into a round shape so you are going to do something called boule shaping. The best way to learn how to do this is by searching up that term on youtube or instagram or tiktok. It is hard to explain in words. Once you have it shaped into a round shape you will do the same thing and take your KINDLED scraper and flip it upside down and lay it in your banneton.

10. Cover the banneton with the dough in it with plastic wrap and put it back into the oven (with the light still being on) for 1 hour.

At some point during this hour you are going to want to put the empty dutch oven into the oven and start pre-heating your oven to 420 degrees. (I also put in a cookie sheet on the bottom rack. This helps the bottom of the bread to not get burned! This is so important!) Timing is determined by how long your oven takes to come to temperature. Time it so the oven is done pre-heating when the dough is done rising at that hour mark.

11. Measure out a piece of parchment paper that is big enough to cover the bottom of your dutch oven and come up over the sides of the dutch oven a bit. It's ok if it hangs out of the dutch oven. You just don't want it poking up and touching the burner at the top of the oven and start on fire :)

After an hour you are going to take the banneton/dough out of the oven and very carefully put the middle of the parchment paper on top of the dough, holding it in place with your hand and carefully guide it to flip it over onto the parchment paper on the counter top. Do this slowly in case it is sticking at all to the lining. You don't want to just flop it onto the counter.

12. It's now time to score the bread! This is where you can get creative! Lightly flour the top of the loaf and gently spread it evenly with your hand. You are now going to use your KINDLED bread lame tool (the razor) to score (or slice) one big score on one side of the loaf and a smaller score on the other side of the loaf and then score the top with whatever design you like. You could also do this other ways, just make sure you have a slice large enough and deep enough for the bread to expand.

13. Once the oven is pre-heated take the dutch oven out and pick up the parchment paper with the dough on top of it and place it into the dutch oven. Like was mentioned, it is ok if the parchment paper hangs out from the lid.

14. Cook it with the lid on it for 30 minutes and then take the lid off and cook it for another 15 minutes. The top will be lightly brown and crisp.

15. Celebrate because seeing your first beautiful loaf of bread is the best day of your life!! :)

SHORT CUT METHOD:

Ok, if you don't have the time or just don't have the energy for the full method, this method works good enough. We still love it and think it's delicious!

Around 8:00p.m. or so you are going to mix things together like we told you above and let it sit in the oven with the light on for 1 hour. Get it out at 9:00p.m. and do a stretch and fold. At about 9:30p.m. do another stretch and fold and then cover it up with a lid or a towel. Let it rise all through the night and in the morning dump it out and shape your bread and put it into your banneton. Let that rise in the oven with the light on for 1 hour. Then follow the scoring and cooking instructions above!

LET'S TALK ABOUT STARTER:

If you are new at making sourdough we suggest just buying starter from someone or ask a neighbor for some. So many people make sourdough. We've never made our own starter from scratch. If you do want to make your own starter there are plenty of tutorials online. For us, we just want to keep things easy.

Caring for your starter:

It takes some work to care for your starter. To keep it thriving you need to feed it. Experts could go into depth on this but this is the just of it and what we do.

If we have 20g of starter we would feed it 20g of water and 20g of flour so that is a 1:1:1 ratio. 1 part starter : 1 part water : 1 part flour. Then we would try to use it when it has at least doubled in height.

If the 1:1:1 ratio rises faster than you want it to you can use a 1:2:2 ratio, so in that example that would be 20g of starter and 40g of water and 40g of flour. That will likely rise more slowly.

We use a rubber band around the jar of the starter to show how much it has risen. Place the rubber band around where the top of the starter is right after you feed it. Then you can tell how much it has risen based off of where the rubber band is.

We discard some of the starter each time we feed it because we don't want to have to keep a huge jar of starter.

If we aren't planning on baking for a while we put the starter in the fridge when it has reached its peak and then get it out once we want to bake again and then we don't have to keep feeding it each day. Make sure the starter gets back to room temperature when you want to use it to back with again.

We know that you can search anything up on ChatGPT and we are certainly not experts at making sourdough bread but if you have any specific questions for us you can always reach out to us at hello@shopkindled.com!

Happy Baking!

Heather & Courtney :)