Here’s an easy sourdough recipe that’s half whole wheat flour, half bread flour, and almost 100% guaranteed to give you nice oven spring and score bloom. A lower hydration formula, good gluten development, scoring twice, and high-low temp baking strategy all contribute to making this recipe turn out beautiful, tasty bread even if you’re a beginner.
Lower hydration dough is often recommended for beginners because it is easier to handle, but many experienced bakers also enjoy working with it. The relative firmness of a dryer dough tends to result in less splay when baking and more oven spring or upward score bloom. While the crumb of a lower hydration bread is usually tighter, when the gluten development and fermentation are optimized, you can get a lovely airy bread.
Low hydration is usually defined as 70% or less water (weight) relative to the weight of the flour in the recipe. This definition assumes the use of strong-ish white flour and doesn’t carry over particularly well to other flours. For example, einkorn and spelt flours take on very little water and can feel very wet at 70% hydration, while a dough made with only whole grain hard red spring wheat can feel quite dry at 83% hydration. In the case of this recipe, which is half whole grain turkey red flour and half strong bread flour, the dough feels manageable at 74% hydration. (The flour and water from the sourdough starter are included in that calculation.)
The recipe below also optimizes gluten development with two-stage mixing in a stand mixer. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can mix once by hand, followed by several rounds of stretching and folding. Likewise, the score bloom is accentuated by a second score made seven minutes into the bake. You can learn more about the impact of this second cut here: Experiment: Scoring Dough Once versus Twice. Finally the strategy of baking the dough for 12 minutes at 500°F, followed by 30-45 minutes at 375°F as described in @homebreadbaker’s recipe for Slow Lazy Sourdough Bread, optimizes upward spring while allowing for a thinner crust many find appealing.
Beginner Turkey Red Sourdough Bread
Try this delicious bread made with a beginner friendly low-ish hydration dough that lends itself to impressive oven spring and ear. The combination of turkey red whole wheat flour and bread flour create a lovely texture and aroma that works great for sandwiches, toast, and more.
Total Time
1 hour, 15 minutes
Instructions
- This dough had a 8.5-hour first rise (calculated from the initial mixing) at 74°F and a 12-hour refrigerated final proof. You can modify this timing as needed with different ambient/dough temperatures.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the flours, water, sourdough starter, and salt. Mix on low speed with the dough hook attachment for 1-2 minutes. The dough mixing and re-mixing below can be done by hand if you don’t have a stand mixer, or you can mix by hand and do several rounds of stretching and folding with rests in between over the course of a couple of hours.
- Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for one hour.
- Mix again, now on med-high speed, for 8-12 minutes. The dough will wrap around the hook and look silky by the end of the mixing.
- Transfer the dough to a straight-walled container if you have one. Cover and let it rise until it is between 1.5x and 2x the original size, an expansion of 50-100%.
- Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and shape it to your preference (boule, batard, oblong loaf). Make sure you build tension on the surface of the dough and dust it with flour before placing it seam-side up in your proofing basket.
- Cover the basket and refrigerate it for 12+ hours.
- Preheat your oven and baking vessel to 500°F for 30 minutes.
- Directly from the refrigerator, flip the dough out of the proofing basket and onto a sheet of parchment paper or a silicone bread sling. Score and load into your baking vessel and oven.
- Bake for 12 minutes, with the option to uncover and re-score the dough at the 7-minute mark and put the lid back on afterward.
- At the 12-minute mark, reduce the oven temperature to 375°F. Bake for 30-45 minutes more or until the internal temperature of the bread is over 205°F. Keep the lid on the entire time except as needed to use a probe thermometer toward the end of the bake.
- Let the bread cool for several hours before you slice it.
