This has become a regular loaf in our household, middle child loves it, and Bikerboy asks for it. If I haven’t baked any bread, I get a puzzle look from him to say, “why?”. Today oldest child rang from the field across our house where she was chatting with her friends, to ask if they all could come over to have some of the bread toasted, when I said I didn’t have any, “..you haven’t got any?? Oh…no bread…oh”. Using my I can’t-be-bothered-to-knead way of making bread it’s no hassle and I can mix the ingredients the night before, put it in the fridge, fold it in the morning and bake it.
Semi Sourdough White Loaf
150g white leaven (100% hydration)
500g strong white flour
280g cool water
20g olive oil
2g instant dried yeast
10g salt
Mix all of the above together, I like to add the oil direct on top of the water when adding it to the digital scales, that way it will make it easier to mix it in.
Once all of the ingredients are well mixed put the dough in a bowl, cover it and leave it in the fridge overnight.
The next morning you’ll see the dough has risen.
Turn it on to a very well floured board and start to fold it, turning it as you go along until you have a rounded loaf or if you want shape it into an elongated loaf.
Once shaped put it on a well floured baking sheet, dust it with flour and leave to rise anything between 30mins – 1hr. Towards the end of the second proving heat the oven to 220C fan/430F for a good 15mins. Have an empty tray sitting on the bottom of the oven also heating up. When you are ready to bake the loaf, slash it with a craft knife or I use a small serrated knife.
Once the oven is hot, pour in a pint of cold water to the now very hot tray, it should sizzle and start steaming away. Put loaf in the oven and bake until well done. Every oven is different but my sourdoughs and semi sourdoughs take between 50mins to an hour. Halfway through baking I like to turn my loaves around. If you’re use to baking dried yeast loaves you’ll have to get your head around that sourdoughs take far longer to bake and will need longer than they appear on the outside, going by hollow sounding bottoms doesn’t work as a tip.
These are some of the semi sourdoughs I’ve been making.
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Beautiful loaves, Azélia! They’ve turned out so well. I need to get back to baking some bread and will make this one next time, but unfortunately the leaven that I had has dried up. The containers weren’t airtight and I haven’t been baking bread over Christmas, so didn’t think to check it earlier. I will make a leaven using Dan’s method with the raisins.
thanks so much Renée…you’ll see how easy to start Dan’s leaven!