Dr. Mel's Sourdough Series - Part 3

In Part 1, we covered what bread is, why we may want to make sourdough bread, and some of the differences between the various ways to leaven our bread.

Part 2 covered everything related to sourdough starter - the two main types, how to make and maintain it, and what to do after we feed it.

This part covers the sourdough bread method. Let's start with a general overview so you can understand the differences and some tips for success:

Step 1 Milling the Flour

You'll need a way to make flour from whole grains. These are my favorite, and I've tested almost all the major brands.

Stone Mill

I just LOVE stone grain mills because I can mill any amount of flour, on demand and the job is done quickly.

NutriMill Harvest - it comes in black, red, white, bronze, green, gold, and silver.
It also comes in Walnut Wood Harvest - Cocoa and Walnut Wood Harvest - Cream but they are not available until early next year. Follow me on Facebook so I can let you know when that is.

Why It's my fave? After using the Mockmill for a few years and LOVING it, I had the opportunity to try the Harvest. At first, I didn't think it did as good of a job as the Mockmill - but I was WRONG. I needed to learn how to use this particular mill, as they all have slightly different operating instructions. I love:

• how much easier it is to adjust the grind fineness over Mockmill 100 and 200
• it has the fastest access to the stones I've seen yet and a brush for cleaning them
• the beautiful wood housing (I own 2 bamboo AND a walnut wood Harvest)
• it mills faster than the Mockmill 100 and Mockmill 100 Lino
• grinds flour as fine as all the other mills

Mockmill 100 or Mockmill 200 are amazing mills, too! If speed is a major factor, the Mockmill 200 mills a little faster than the NutriMill Harvest does.

Huge family or micro-bakery? Mockmill 200 Professional, with it's cooling mechanism to keep milling for an extended period of time without overheating the stones or the flour, is an excellent choice. We have one at the bakery, and I sold mine to our local cafe.

Impact Mill

An impact mill basically just makes really fine flour by annihilating the grain into powder before dumping it into a bucket for storage. It requires more cleaning than a stone mill, but is an affordable option to get started milling and these mills will last.

NutriMill Impact Grain Mill

Why it's my favorite? I love the design of this mill, making it nice for a low counter-top footprint. You can stack the hopper and other tools inside the compartment flour is milled into. The connecting mechanism is sturdier than the Wondermill, and it mills flour just as fine. I know because I've owned and tested them both. This mill is smaller than the Nutrimill Classic grain mill, so if you want a really large amount of flour milled at once for a decent price - that is the grain mill for you.

Use my affiliate discount code JUSTMILLIT at checkout for $20 off your NutriMill purchase

Other Essentials

The Recipe Base

Just like the products influencers tout on social media, I found the recipes to all be rather similar - and honestly not all that great for many of my patients. I don't want bread with additives, but I still want it to be good. Thanks to my friend Rob encouraging me to do some experiments, I totally changed my base recipe to the Italian Bread base - and it's now where I start ALL my bread recipes.

I highly recommend you print this out, maybe even more than one copy, and take notes using the size you bake with the most. All the bread recipes I make begin here.

How Much Starter?

Step 2 - Mixing the Dough to Windowpane

We continue mixing, or kneading, our dough until it reaches a strong windowpane. You'll know you get there when your dough no longer looks shaggy or like mashed potatoes and it turns into a smooth, shiny dough that clings for life to your dough hook. It should be able to stretch all the way to the bottom of the bowl when you lift your dough hook up and out.

No Mixer - No Problem!

Step 3 - Bulk Fermentation (AKA the 1st Rise)

This is the stage where your dough is going to do the majority of it's rising. Remember with sourdough there is really only one long episode of rising to it's max (just like your starter), and then it'll begin to deflate again. In fact, sourdough bread is basically just a much bigger sourdough starter - maybe with salt added for flavor. So think of bulk fermentation for sourdough as the FIRST PART of the one big rise of your bread.

Playing with your Bread

I encourage you to play with your bread during this phase of the bread process, which is not what we tend to do when making yeast bread. This will get you very familiar with the way the dough changes over time, and you'll learn how your dough should behave, look, and feel. Very important! Sure, you can do my Lazy Sourdough and skip all this - but THIS is where the learning happens and, with that, you gain confidence and experience to make GREAT sourdough.

There are three main ways I like to play with my bread dough. Lamination, stretch and folds, and coil folds. When using a mixer, I prefer to do lamination first, then coil folds the rest of the time. When doing sourdough by hand, I would do stretch and folds until you've got a gorgeous windowpane, then lamination, followed by stretch and folds. It'll take more time for the gluten to really develop for the other two to be great.

Lamination

Stretch and Folds

This video was not from making the loaves in the other videos, but from a time I made bread by hand over the summer.

Coil Folds

You'll see two sets of coil folds below. The first will be from the start of the bulk fermentation (after lamination), and the 2nd set will be at the end of the bulk fermentation. Compare the two, and notice how different the dough looks. I know you can't feel it in a video, but it is very noticeable when you look at it to see what looks done and what doesn't.

This video happened immediately after the lamination video:

The following video happened about 4-5 hours after I mixed the dough:

Coil Folds when Mixing Dough by Hand

When are we done Stretch and Folds or Coil Folds?

When the dough starts to hold it's structure, yes, but if you're unsure about where your dough is in the fermentation process, I encourage you to do coil folds until you can FEEL the dough is ready:

Step 4 - Shaping

Here we cover how to gently shape our dough and prepare our bread pans for the dough.

Step 5 - Scoring & Baking Prep

Step 6 - Post Bake Wash & Cooling

Step 7 - Slicing, Tasting, and Storing

We did it!

Did it matter whether we used a liquid starter or a stiff starter to make our bread? Not really. We didn't need any additives like vital wheat gluten, sunflower lecithin, and we didn't even add sugar of any kind to our dough. I haven't done that in over a year for our daily bread. Why? Because our DAILY bread should not contain sugar. That was meant in the old days for special occasions such as holidays or birthdays. Our bread was soft, flexible, and strong - and... it stays that way for days! Bonus points: we got all the benefits of freshly milled flour AND sourdough at the same time.

Why I don't push my fermentation longer?

Some folks need or want to push their fermentation longer, but freshly milled flour has active enzymes that are speeding things up. Not just the fermentation - all the things. In my opinion, it's not very practical to make sourdough take longer than it naturally takes. Fresh milled flour sourdough simply takes less time. You want to slow it down more? Use less starter, and when you shape it - put it into the fridge. That'll slow it down - but don't be surprised if it still goes faster than you'd imagined. Many folks are ruined with an overnight fridge risen batch of dough.