Sourdough in 10 Steps — Full Recipe & Transcript

[00:00] Hello, and welcome to my series of very boring tutorial where I feel like I kind of know how to do something. So I'm gonna try to show you how I do that thing. And today we're gonna be making sourdough bread. Sourdough bread is actually very high maintenance and there's a lot to know. At the same time, you really don't need to know that much

[00:13] to just make the bread. So I'm gonna try to find a good balance between sharing what I've learned and just showing you how to make bread. We're gonna set the mood of a nice rainy Saturday and we're just cozy and we're gonna make warm bread,

[00:26] even though it's like 70 degrees and sunny outside. It's actually rainy in my mind. Okay, so let's get into it. This is my sous chef for the day.

[00:38] His name is Don. He left. Sourdough seems like the most complicated bread ever because it is so high maintenance, but it's really not hard. It just takes a lot of time. So I'm gonna show you step-by-step how to make sourdough bread

[00:51] and I'm gonna try to not overcomplicate it because I want you to just have good bread. Just enjoy the bread scene. It's cool, cool poppin' bread town over here. So I think that we can break it up into 10 easy steps. Feed, weight, dough, weight, stretch weight, stretch weight,

[01:06] stretch weight, stretch weight longer. Shape, fridge, go to bed, bake. It's not easy. It just takes literally like two days, but again, that's why I said today is a casual, rainy, cozy winter Saturday and tomorrow

[01:19] we're gonna bake on a nice Sunday morning. It's just a perfect weekend activity. So let's jump into this. Step number one, feed. Sourdough is alive, you have to feed it and it needs to have a meal before you can cook with it. So let's give it that meal.

[01:31] Here's my sourdough starter. It's been sitting on the counter, okay? It just looks like flour and water soup because that's exactly what it is. I have it in a clear mason jar so that you can see it but I usually have it in a red solo cup because then you can just start away

[01:44] and you don't have to wash the cup because this is very bad for your drain. Do not ever, ever pour this down your drain or you'll have to call a plumber and then you'll be sad. We're gonna feed it a one-to-one-to-one ratio. Starter, bread flour, water.

[01:56] That's it. It doesn't matter how much of each, just the same amount of each of them. I'm gonna be giving you a recipe that you can use at home that's gonna make two loaves of bread. In this video, I'm gonna double that and I'm gonna make four loaves. So when I feed, I'm gonna do 180 grams of starter,

[02:08] 180 grams of flour and 180 grams of water. You doing this at home, just do 100 of each. You know what else I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make a list of things that you actually need to make sourdough because there's a lot of sourdough stuff that you can buy. You can buy them if you want.

[02:20] They're really fun and they're cute. What you actually need is a scale. Let's just see how much this is. I use King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour. It looks like this. You can also use Unbleached All Purpose Flour.

[02:32] I don't think it matters. I think the difference is like the protein content maybe. The only thing that matters is that it says Unbleached. I'm gonna add 180 grams of flour. A lot of people use cute wooden spoons to mix.

[02:46] I think that's really annoying and hard to clean. I like to use a chopstick because it's really easy to wipe off with a paper towel. For water, I use bottled water. I live in Nevada and so the sink water here is really, really gross. And I don't want my yummy bread to taste like my nasty sink water.

[02:58] You could also probably use the water from the fridge, but then you'd probably want a microwave it because you want to use room temperature or warm water. So I just use this purified drinking water with minerals added for taste. It's literally just like normal bottled water.

[03:10] If you live in a normal place with like normal sink water that you can casually drink, just use the sink water. It's fine. What I'm gonna do is pour it into this cup and then I'm gonna microwave it so that it's a little warm because when it's a little warm, it helps this situation just go faster.

[03:23] And we're already dealing with like two-day bread so anything that can make it go faster is ideal. I poured too much. Oh, I drank too much. Okay, that's perfect. I'm gonna microwave this. Ooh, that's super warm.

[03:35] I'm gonna put an ice cube in it. And you want it to be a thick pancake consistency. So for some reason, this is really runny maybe because I added an extra ice cube. So I'm just gonna add a little bit extra flour.

[03:47] And this is the consistency that you want. Thick pancake. I'm gonna wipe my chopstick with a paper towel. And now it's basically clean. And I'm not gonna get any flour in my sink. So ta-da.

[03:59] Congratulations, we have completed step one. My starter is fed. You want it to be covered, but you don't want it to be sealed. So like if you're using a mason jar, just like put the lid on top or this one that I have instead of sealing the lid on, I just put the lid on upside down.

[04:12] I'm gonna take a rubber band and I'm gonna put it right where the sourdough is so that I can see how much it grows. So we fed our little starter baby. It's gonna take about four hours for it to eat. We'll know that it's finished eating when it has doubled or tripled in sides.

[04:24] I have found that Debbie loves to be under the stove light right here. She stays nice and cozy here. You could just leave it on the counter, but if it's cold, everything's gonna take longer. So if your house is cold, like my house is always cold,

[04:36] I like to put it under that light. A lot of people will tell you that you can also put it in the oven, turned off with the oven light on. I did that once and I murdered my sourdough starter because it got too hot in there. So I would not recommend that.

[04:48] So now that you've fed your starter, what are you gonna do with the rest of this? Well, I would just throw it away, honestly, but you'll wanna make sure you throw it in the garbage. I do not ever put this in your sink. My garbage is right here, by the way. I'm not dumping this on the floor.

[05:00] Honestly, you could dump it on the floor if you wanted to, as long as you don't put it down your sink, it's fine. Make sure you get as much as you can in the garbage. Wash your dishes in cold water. Hot water will just help it dissolve and it'll go right down your drain. So cold water is best. And then I also buy these little mesh things

[05:13] that you can put around your drain. When I do my sourdough dishes, I just put this net mesh thing on this and then it catches all of the chunks. And then you just take this out and you throw it away. We're gonna wait until this doubles or even triples in size, which is gonna take about four hours.

[05:26] I'm probably gonna go watch an episode of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. What are you gonna do? So I said to let it rest for four hours. It's only been two and it's already doubled in size. So you could cook with this now, but I'm gonna give it another two hours and see if it triples.

[05:38] All right, for you, it's been about two seconds. For me, it's been about four hours. So welcome back to me. I would like to show you the progress of Debbie. So you can see she's more than doubled in size. The reason that I left it longer

[05:50] is simply I like to see how big it grows because it's very satisfying to me to see when the dough gets really, really big. So I usually give it the full four hours, but honestly, you could cook with it when it doubles in size, I think, and it should be fine. You know what I've learned about sourdough?

[06:02] Is every single time I make it, I seem to mess up in a different way. And every single time it's turned out completely fine. But now it's time for step three, which is make the dough. When you're making the actual dough, you do need to make sure that you have the exact grams.

[06:15] Because baking is a science. Big science numbers, big, bad, big, breaking, big, bread, baking numbers. So the recipe that I'm gonna be making today and showing you is from the sourdough mama on TikTok.

[06:27] But I do cook it a little bit different from her, but the measurements are her measurements. So you're gonna put your bowl on the scale, and then you're gonna zero it out. So it says zero. And then you're gonna set it to grams. And now you're gonna do 250 grams.

[06:39] I'm gonna do 500. But see, look how cool and bubbly that looks. I love sourdough. Look how sticky that sourdough is. The whisk just sticks to it like it's spiderweb. After this starter, we're gonna put in water and then flour and then salt. One time I put in the salt first

[06:51] and it messed literally everything up and it turned into this weird giant luke and it was so weird. And then I baked it and it still kinda turned out fine, honestly, so whatever. But I don't really want my bread to look like a luke this time. So I'm just gonna do water, flour, salt.

[07:04] And then you are gonna add 1,000 grams of flour. I'm gonna add 2,000 grams of flour. No, I'm not. Cause we're gonna do water first. Cause that's what I just said and I already forgot. So now you are gonna add 725 grams of water. I am gonna add, do the math, 1450 grams.

[07:19] I'm gonna microwave my water because again, warm water makes everything go faster. Here's my one minute microwave intermission, dance. All the way to the floor.

[07:36] Oh, hi, gone. Help, I'm being attacked. I'm being attacked by a puddle. Ah, help, please save yourself. Save yourself. Oh, it's done. So now that I have my luke milky water,

[07:48] I'm gonna show you one of the first accessories that you don't need with sourdough, which is a bread whisk. Now that I have my starter and my water, I'm gonna whisk this together. Do you need this? No, you could literally use your fingers. You could also use a fork.

[08:00] But it's kinda fun and cute. Now you're gonna use 1,000 grams of flour. I'm gonna use 2,000, which is probably gonna be this whole thing, maybe even more. Oh, oh my gosh. 2,300, okay, let me take some out.

[08:13] I didn't think all that was gonna be over 2,000. I honestly feel like your hand is easier than this thing. So I'm gonna do that. And you know what I like doing is using a glove. Cause then you don't have to wash your hands after. And it's not like I'm trying to like, not be clean and wash my hands,

[08:26] but then you don't have to wash all the dough down your drain. Can you hear that? Does that sound aesthetic? So I just kinda squeeze the ingredients together.

[08:38] I feel like that works the best for me. And then I'm gonna kinda use my fingernails to scratch down the sides of the bowl. Oh, hang on, I need a break. My hand's tired. Oh, I could really use a gatorade.

[08:50] So you're gonna keep mixing this until there's no more, like chunks of dry flour. So this is the consistency. They call it a shaggy dough. Look at this dough.

[09:02] It literally gave me a wet hand. I probably could have added the salt when I added the flour, but I forgot so. We'll add it now. I'm gonna use 50 grams. You are gonna use 25. I like sea salt because I think it's really yummy, but you could probably use like literally any salt.

[09:15] I don't think it matters at all. And I'm just going to sprinkle it in here. Again, I really don't think anything is that deep like ever, including when you add your salt to your sourdough. Look how sticky this dough is. It will eat your glove.

[09:29] So step three is complete. We've made our dough. Step four is wait one hour. I'm gonna take a plastic shower cap. Okay, you could use a towel. I think shower caps work better because it keeps the moisture in.

[09:41] So I'm gonna wrap this shower cap around my bowl. Now I'm gonna put her back in her favorite place, which is under this light. And I'm gonna wait one hour because she was just heavily massaged and she needs a break. Oh, you have all this extra starter. What are you supposed to do with it?

[09:53] Great question. Well, if you want to make sourdough, you need starter. So we're gonna have to keep this because if we just threw this away, then I would not have any sourdough starter. And then basically that would be the last sourdough I ever made and that would be depressing. Putting it in a solo cup is easier

[10:06] because then just like this sticky glove, you can just throw it away because imagine washing your hands or washing your dishes when they're covered in sticky sourdough. I'm gonna get my scale out again and I'm gonna see how much starter I have left. I think a good rule of thumb is to just keep

[10:19] like 30 grams of starter. Oh, wow, that's 50. Okay, I'm gonna take like half of that. So this is 30 grams of starter. All this stuff that I'm gonna throw away is called discard. You can search like discard recipes and stuff

[10:32] that you can use with all this extra sourdough. I've never done a discard recipe and we're not gonna start today. Now I'm gonna add 30 grams of water and 30 grams of flour.

[10:44] And there is my fed starter. If you wanted to bake within the next few days, you could just leave it on the counter, okay? Just put something on top of it so that it doesn't get dry and crusty and then you don't like have a net flying in there or something, I use the old lid of a candle.

[10:56] And then if you're gonna leave it on the counter, you just have to feed it every like 24 hours just a one to one to one ratio. If you don't want to bake again soon, you could just put this in the fridge. It's literally fine in the fridge for like probably upwards of like a year. Say for example, you leave it in the fridge

[11:08] for a few months and then you pull it out and you're like, I wanna make sourdough bread and you look at it and you're like, oh my gosh! It's full of gray gross moldy looking water. That's called hooch and that's totally normal but the hooch means that your sourdough starter is hungry.

[11:21] So if you see hooch, I would take it out of the fridge, feed it and then put it back in the fridge. I actually didn't need to keep this because I keep some extra sourdough in my fridge. Do you wanna see? This is my emergency Debbie. The thing is though, you cannot just take this out

[11:34] of the fridge and cook with it. This hasn't been fed in probably like a month or so. You need to feed it at least once before you actually make your bread. That's your fun little informational session.

[11:46] Congratulations everybody. Step number four is finally complete. This is what it looks like. It looks a little bit more wet. So now we're gonna enter into something called stretch and folds. Stretch and folds are exactly what they sound like. You just stretch it and fold it.

[11:58] So you do four stretch and folds, wait 30 minutes. Do it again, wait 30 minutes, do it again. Wait 30 minutes, do it again. You do the front, the back, the right and the left. Grab it right here and you stretch it.

[12:11] I kinda wiggle it and fold it over. Now I'm gonna grab it in the back but I'm gonna flip it around so it's easier to grab. Okay, so you just grab a huge handful, give it a little wiggle and fold it over. Then I'm gonna do the right hand side.

[12:25] I'm gonna grab it, wiggle it, fold it over. Now I'm gonna do the left hand side. Grab it, wiggle it, fold it over. And that's it, that's your stretch and folds. In gym terms, four sets of four reps. So that was our four reps, now we just have three more sets.

[12:37] But because I'm making a double batch, I'm just gonna give it a few extra stretch and folds. I also think stretch and folds are just really fun. One thing you wanna make sure when you're doing your stretch and folds is that the dough's not ripping. See, like if you were to just pull it up, see how it rips, you don't want it to rip.

[12:50] And that's kinda why I like to wiggle it and jule it. It's easier to get it to stretch without it ripping. There's also this other type of stretch and fold that I'll show you. You grab it on both sides, try to lift it out of the bowl. And then you rock it back and forth.

[13:02] Kinda like, I don't know if you were to let a blanket fall over your hands or something. And then we're gonna put our shower cap back on and let it sit for 30 minutes and then do it again. Back under my light bulb, my sweet baby goes.

[13:14] So we're gonna do our second set of stretch and folds. And I also got my door dash order. Do you wanna see what I got? Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. So I get this chicken plate. It just has like this really juicy chicken. It's just like so flavorful, I'm so good. These are the best fries I've ever had in my entire life.

[13:26] So I'm gonna do my second round of stretch and fold. We're just gonna grab it and stretch and fold. Fold and we'll do the sides, stretch, fold. We'll do this side, stretch, and fold.

[13:39] And then I just kinda wiggle it and you see how it stretches over my hand. So I'm gonna put the shower cap back on and let it sit for another 30 minutes while I eat my dinner and finish my housewives episode. I'm watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I also just finished the Real Housewives of Salt Lake.

[13:52] Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Do any of those women like each other? Cause it seems like they all hate each other. The reunion was crazy. I'm gonna stop yapping about housewives and go watch housewives. I'll be right back. Plot twist.

[14:05] Okay, we did two stretch and folds. We have two more stretch and folds to go. However, I wanna introduce you to the exciting world of inclusions, there's a net. Inclusions are just things that you add to your bread to make them more fun. Like cheese or honestly anything, but cheese is my favorite.

[14:20] So you have two opportunities to add your inclusions. You can either do it during the stretch and fold phase or you can add it when you shape your loaves. If you want it to be really well mixed in, then you can do it during the stretch and fold,

[14:32] so it gets all nice and evenly mixed up. If it's big and chunky, then you'll wanna add it during the shaping cause if it's big and chunky, it might not like mix in super well. Do you know what I'm saying? This is the dough for four loaves of bread, right?

[14:45] So I am going to divide this up into four and continue the stretch and folds independently because some of these things, I want to stretch and fold those inclusions into the bread. At this point in the process, it's gonna be really sticky.

[14:57] So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna give that a minute to maybe fall out of the bowl. This is something you don't need, but this has become one of my favorite kitchen appliances. This isn't an appliance. A kitchen accessory?

[15:09] This is called a bench scraper I think. I have this plastic one and I think this is maybe a bench scraper cause you use this plastic one with a rounded edge to like scoop out the dough from the bowl. I don't know if this is the same thing or what exactly this is,

[15:21] but you know what's really nice about this is because it's metal, this makes my life so much easier to clean things because I don't have to scrub. I love this passionately. Okay, so laying it upside down did nothing.

[15:33] So I'm gonna take my plastic bench scraper and scrape this out of here. I should probably put a bunch of flour on the counter so it maybe doesn't stick it bad. It's not gonna be this sticky when it's done, but sweetie, it is hours and hours and hours away

[15:46] from being done. Just cut it in half and then half again, I'm not gonna measure, I don't care that much. It really doesn't matter, it's not that deep. We have our halves and then in half again.

[16:00] One of these, we'll go back in here. I'm gonna take this one, put it in here. Cut this one in half, that in here. This one in here. See how there's stuff on the counter? And it, oh my gosh, it's so messy, it's clean.

[16:15] And then I have my garbage can right here and I just scrape it off the counter straight into the garbage. So from here, we're gonna complete the stretch and fold process. We still have two more rounds of stretch and folds. Let's start with my first loaf and this one is gonna be sprinkles.

[16:27] This is a really good time to explain the difference between adding during the stretch and folds and adding during shaping because I have a YouTube short where I made a sourdough loaf with sprinkles but I forgot to add it during the stretch and folds and I added it during the shaping

[16:40] and you can see that it's not really spread out very well. It's kinda like chunky because when you shape the dough, you fold it in thirds and then you roll it. So you can see from the picture, you can kinda see where the bread folded

[16:53] and where most of the sprinkles are. So this is gonna be a good comparison and you can see how this time, the sprinkles are really gonna be incorporated and you'll see how beautiful this one is when it's done. We're just gonna add a bunch of sprinkles. I don't really know how many.

[17:05] Look how fun this looks! It literally just looks like a wet ball of sprinkles. Stretch and fold, stretch and fold, stretch and fold, stretch and fold. Stretch and fold.

[17:17] You could also do chocolate chips, but frankly, I hate chocolate chips. I mean, I love chocolate chips in themselves and I love chocolate. But I hate chocolate chips in sourdough bread. I made it once and I thought it was gonna be delicious, best bread I've ever had,

[17:29] but it actually was the worst bread I've ever had. Give me sweet or give me savory or give me salty. I do not want any combination of the three of them together and want them separate. Let's put this back on the stove to rest. The next, I'm just gonna do normal. So let's just do quick stretch and folds.

[17:42] See how stretchy it is right now? And it's not even ripping. It's a gluten is getting stronger. A little scoop and shake. So I'll put this over here. Our next loaf of bread is gonna be a pizza loaf. So we're gonna be adding pepperoni and mozzarella cheese.

[17:54] If it's small, like the sprinkles or shredded cheese, I would add it during stretching folds. If it's big and chunky, like pepperoni or these mozzarella pearls, I would add it later. So I'm gonna set the pepperoni and mozzarella balls aside and I'm gonna open up this shredded mozzarella

[18:07] and we'll add this now. I don't know. Two handfuls. So let's stretch this cheese in. It kinda looks like it has hair, but it's just cheese.

[18:19] Shower cap and set aside. Last but not least, we have my personal favorite, which is aciago. The last time I used this, I accidentally shaved off a little bit of my knuckle when I was grating. That was out. That smells like feet.

[18:31] It's gonna be so good though. So let's put in half of the aciago. Let's put in another big handful. We'll do our stretching folds and then we will put the shower cap on and put this on the stove.

[18:43] It's honestly probably time to start round four of stretching folds on our first loaf. See how it got a lot more moist? I think that happens when you add in sugar. Oh my gosh, it's even starting to die the color of the dough.

[18:56] Cool. This one was our plain one. Four and done. The mozzarella. So now we can give our sourdough a round of applause

[19:08] because we just finished step five, which was stretch weight, stretch weight, stretch weight, stretch. Now that the stretch folds are over, we can move on to step six, which is weight longer. Weight longer entails about four hours,

[19:20] which really sucks for me because it's 7.30 pm. I'm gonna be shaping these at about 11.30 pm. It's okay. Hello, don't mind me. I took a shower and I self-tanned and I put on my pajamas. I'm getting ready for bed. We just completed step six, which is weight four hours.

[19:33] And now we're gonna move on to step seven, which is shaping. And I'm gonna try to do this quickly because when I'm done with this, I can go to bed. Yay, bed. Let's start simple with our plain loaf.

[19:46] I'm gonna flour the counter a little bit. See how this just pulls right off the bowl? It's kind of satisfying. And the bowl's basically clean. This is gonna be called laminating. So you take it and you just stretch it out

[20:01] like this, like a big piece of paper. It's very sticky, so I'm just gonna add a little splash of flour. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna fold it in thirds and then roll it up into a ball the other way. Grab this and fold it over.

[20:13] Grab this third and fold it over. You're gonna just roll it this way, the hot dog way. So I'm gonna put way more flour on the counter and then also some flour on here because this is really sticky.

[20:25] So that was the laminating part. And now we're gonna do the push and pull part. Put your hands like this, like a butterfly kind of, and then you just push it and then you turn it 25 degrees and then you pull it. And you kinda let your fingers slip underneath there.

[20:39] Oh, see, and there's this big bubble and you're gonna get all these fun bubbles and that's great. Turn it 25 degrees. You're gonna butterfly your hands. You're gonna push it. Then you're gonna turn it 25 degrees and you're gonna pull it towards you back here.

[20:52] And what you're doing is you're creating tension on the top of the loaf so that instead of being really sloppy, floppy doughy, it's gonna have like more structure and stuff and it'll just look nicer and it'll look more tight.

[21:04] There's not like a set number of times that you do this just until you feel like it looks nice and pretty and firm. See how that looks way better than the blob? We had before because we created surface tension by doing those push and pulls.

[21:16] So I'm just gonna put a little more flour on top, give it a nice little rub. And now I wanna show you something unnecessary called a baniton. I have two banitons. How many banitons do you need? Zero. They're nice to have. You know what you could do if you don't have a baniton?

[21:29] Is just use a normal bowl. So I have my cute little liner and my cute little baniton just like this and I'm gonna take my sourdough loaf and I'm gonna put it smooth side down in here. You can kinda see how it's still kinda sticky and stuff on the bottom.

[21:41] So what I like to do is just pinch it closed because we made all that tension and I want to try to keep that tension. That's super sticky. So I'm just going to put more flour on it. Shower cap.

[21:53] And we're gonna put this in the fridge overnight. And congratulations. That's our first loaf. Yay! Ooh, let's do our second. Gonna spread this out like a big piece of paper. Fold it in thirds, thirds and roll it.

[22:07] You can kinda pull it a little bit while you're rolling it just a teeny bit though. You see how it's super open on the sides like that? You kinda wanna close those. So let's try to kinda tuck that in, push, pull.

[22:21] And again, I'm just doing this until I feel like the top is nice and tight. Kinda like if it was to have a facelift and it was gonna be really, you know what I mean? That's kinda what you want your bread to look like and we'll put it in the baniton. I do not have one of those fancy little liners for this bowl

[22:35] so I'm just gonna use a towel. You just wanna make sure that they're not super fluffy because if you use a really fluffy towel then you're gonna have some fuzzy stuff in your bread and you don't want that. Add some flour, cover it.

[22:47] Now we have my favorite occiago loaf, same thing. I just love this sound and it's soft like a pillow. Fold this in thirds, roll it up, push, turn, pull.

[23:04] I'm out of cute banitons so I'm just gonna use this dirty bowl from before. Roll this upside down, smooth side down into my bowl. Flour, fold the corners in, shower cap, done. One more and this is where we're gonna add

[23:16] some more inclusions. We're just gonna put them everywhere. Instead of getting out of cutting board and a knife, I'm just gonna cut these with my selling scissors into quarters. So I'm gonna sprinkle this pepperoni.

[23:28] Oh, it looks like a little pizza. And now I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna fold it in thirds before I fold again though. More cheese and pepperoni. I'm gonna fold this one over, put the rest of our cheese and pepperoni.

[23:41] So we'll be extra careful on the push and pulls to try to keep them all inside. Sometimes the one with the inclusions look a little weird and lumpy, but it's okay because it's full of things that make it lumpy.

[23:54] See how that just has so much more tension than before? You can see that the pepperoni is starting to poke through so I'm gonna try to pinch that closed as well. If you're doing one with inclusions and everything's kind of falling over everywhere

[24:06] just do your best, it really doesn't matter that much. That is the completion of step seven, which is shape the loaves and the beginning of step eight where they spend all night long in the fridge. So I would recommend having it in there for about 12 hours or overnight.

[24:18] Cause it's 11 pm and I'll probably cook it tomorrow morning whenever it's convenient for me. So maybe like eight to 12 hours. Step nine is go to bed. So I'll see you tomorrow for the last step. Good morning, who's ready to make some bread?

[24:30] It's actually not morning, it's 5.30 pm because when I woke up this morning I forgot that I was actually supposed to go to a woodworking class with my friend, so I spent all day making a cabinet with her. So that was really fun, but now it's time to make my bread. All you need to do is preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

[24:44] You remember how I told you that a lot of sourdough things you don't need, what you do need is a Dutch oven. Oh, also I painted my pantry rainbow. Isn't that fun? But yeah, you can see my Dutch oven here. They're pretty cheap. You can get one on Amazon for like 30 or 40 dollars.

[24:56] I'll link a few cute options. We preheated the oven to 450 degrees. What's very important is that you have to preheat the Dutch oven. So put the Dutch oven in your oven and then start preheating so that the Dutch oven is just as hot as your real oven.

[25:10] Which one should we do first? Maybe aciago so we can eat it first. Except I don't remember which one of these was aciago. Whoa, look how big that got. Do you remember how tiny that was before? Is this my aciago?

[25:22] Yeah, that smells really stinky, so I think that's aciago. They have fancy silicone bread thingies that you can put your bread on and then you put the silicone thing into your pot. I don't have that, I just have parchment paper. Oh.

[25:36] Oh, I barely have parchment paper. No, I was just about to make four loves of bread. Okay, maybe I have some in my rainbow pantry. Why is this parchment paper white in this one brown? Does the color matter? Are all parchment papers made the same?

[25:49] It does oven safe. We'll just put this in the oven and if I smell burning then we'll stop. We're gonna sacrifice the sprinkle loaf to test out my parchment paper. Maybe you do want the fancy silicone thing because then you won't run into a problem

[26:01] where you run out of parchment paper when you're trying to make bread. So we're just gonna lay out a piece of parchment paper and I'm gonna take my loaf. Remember how we put the smooth side on the bottom? We want the smooth side on the top again. So we're gonna flip this upside down. Oh, look at how beautiful and round that is.

[26:15] Are you kidding? It's like burping a baby. This is another piece of sourdough equipment that you don't need, but you could buy if you wanted to. It's basically like a razor blade on a fancy stick. And all you do is cut a big line down the middle of your loaf.

[26:31] A lot of people get really fancy and they make really cute designs. I could not care less. So I just make one big cut right down the middle and it works fine for me. That's called scoring your loaf. You know what I did here once? Actually, is that scoring your loaf

[26:43] actually doesn't really do anything to the bread, but back in the olden days when they used communal ovens and everyone was baking bread together they would score their loaf so they would be able to tell whose loaf belongs to who. I don't know if that's true or not. That's what I heard on the internet.

[26:56] So obviously it's true. So now I'm gonna put my loaf in here and back in the oven, it goes. Okay, and then we're gonna set a timer for 35 minutes. Three things to note.

[27:08] Number one, you don't need this, you could use a knife, it would be totally fine. Number two, if you watch a lot of videos about people making sourdough you might see them throw ice cubes in the side or sometimes they put little grains of rice at the bottom. I don't do that.

[27:20] I'm pretty sure if you've been baking and your bread is like really dry you can put an ice cube in there to help make more steam and keep it moist. I've never had that problem, my bread tastes fine so I don't add ice.

[27:32] Reversely, if your bread seems too moist you can add some little grains of dried, uncooked rice to the bottom of the pan and then you put the parchment paper on top of it and then the rice in there will help absorb

[27:44] some of the extra moisture. Again, I feel like my bread tastes fine so I don't do that either. One thing I did learn though is the first few times I made sourdough the bottom would get completely black and burnt even though the rest of it was perfectly fine.

[27:56] And so what I figured out, if you put a baking sheet underneath the Dutch oven it won't burn anymore. Okay, we have 20 seconds left on the timer but white paper is just a little bit burnt. It's okay, five, five, four, three, two, one.

[28:14] I feel like it's like... Now what we're gonna do is take the lid off and let it brown for five more minutes. Maybe three depending on how it's looking. Yeah, it's kinda burnt a little bit so I don't actually, I'm not even gonna brown it.

[28:26] If I let that brown anymore it's gonna not be brown anymore, it's gonna be black. Why is that so burnt? My guess is gonna be because of all the sugar. I think sugar cooks differently maybe. I don't know. It's gonna be really pretty on the inside though. You could use a cooling rack if you want to.

[28:38] I like to just put it on the stove. So I'm just gonna put this over here. Now let's cook my assiagos. I'm gonna show you how to cut this with a knife in case you don't have one of these fancy little bread razors. You just cut it.

[28:51] This one also looks a little bit more flat than the other one. Again, science, I don't really know. But here's the thing. I usually mess up something here or there like this time I accidentally let this ferment for like 18 hours in the fridge

[29:03] when I was gonna do maybe 10. But it's fine because you just cook it the same way and I feel like it always turns out amazing. I kinda have this theory that sourdough bread is foolproof because I'm a fool and I make great bread. And I'm gonna do 35 minutes again because that's what I always do.

[29:15] You do need to let the bread cool for one hour before you cut it open. So let's cook a few more loaves and then we'll cut that sourdough open. You can't wait. I hear the oven. Let's take a little off and hope that it's not burnt like the last one.

[29:28] Yes, see how it still looks like not burnt like the other one? We're gonna put this back in the oven for five minutes to brown the top. I also'm gonna put the lid back in the oven so that the lid stays hot

[29:41] so that when we move on to our next loaf it's all hot and ready to go. Let's do three minutes. My beautiful loaf is ready. I love this half of cheese. Ow. I need my nails to be a little bit longer. This loaf looks a little bit ugly

[29:53] but it will taste the best I think. You know what we could try to do on this one is make a fun design. I've never, ever, ever tried to do a fun design. Wow. That one is juicy and plump. What I see a lot of people do when they make really pretty loaves

[30:06] is they dust the top of it in flour and then as it grows open only the top part has flour and it helps to make a really pretty design and I'm gonna dust the top of this in flour. Why do I not do this on any of my other loaves?

[30:19] Well because it doesn't affect the taste and I really don't care so I don't. So when you score it, scoring is like cutting it but then when you bake it and that score mark comes up and is like all pretty and stuff

[30:31] that's called an ear because it sticks up like a little ear. I don't really have an ear here. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I don't know, you can let me know in the comments if I'm doing something wrong. I'm not saying that this is the perfect sourdough recipe ever. I'm just saying that this is how I make my sourdough

[30:43] and I think my bread is amazing. I think I'm gonna do a big score on the side here. See how this one's really deep so that's your quote expansion score because that's where it's gonna expand and then you make just a baby cut.

[30:57] So these are wheat stalks I think. Everyone say a prayer that this looks nice and cute and yummy when it comes out. So I'm gonna put this back in here. Put this lid on 35 minutes. I think I'm gonna do the laundry.

[31:09] The best sound ever. Oh my gosh, that looks so cute. Okay, let's give it five more minutes. Why don't I have a pretty ear on my loaves?

[31:21] Sour dough. Scoring angle matters more than depth. Oh, oh, you're supposed to score at a 30 to 45 degree angle not straight down. Oh, I didn't know that.

[31:34] Let's try that with this one that I'm about to make in a second and we'll see. Oh, that's just beautiful. The wheat stalks look a little bit more like bugs but that's okay, you can eat bugs. Look at how plump that is.

[31:46] You can see where I cut it but this line is flat. Whereas this seam is kind of popping open like this, that is the ear. This is technically an ear but it didn't ear.

[31:58] The ear is not earring. This ear is baby earring. That's a good loaf of bread right there. And let's do our last loaf of the evening. Let's try a 45 degree angle.

[32:10] If this works, I'm gonna be shocked. Oh, geez, it's already 8 PM, 35 minutes. That's what I'm saying. The sourdough is easy but it takes forever. So if someone gives you a homemade loaf of sourdough bread, they probably really like you.

[32:23] That's a very thoughtful present. I'll be back in 30. It's done. Did it leaf? Ah, no, well, a little bit. It leaped more than the other ones. That looks so good. There is cheese everywhere.

[32:37] Let's timer five minutes. When we eat that one, we should dip it in marinara. It's ready, it's ready, it's ready, it's ready. This might be the most beautiful one yet. Look at my magician's trick. Oh, that didn't work.

[32:49] It's like snow. It's not funny because I'm the one that has to clean that up. That scared my dog. He's okay. So it did ear a little bit more. It's hard to tell though because there's like pockets

[33:03] of pepperoni and cheese just coming out literally everywhere. Just so much cheese. They all look so different. Even though they're all from the same batch. So here's my plain loaf. It eared okay, so pretty.

[33:15] And then these are the little wheat stalks that we made that kind of look like bugs to me. My favorite part of a sourdough loaf is something called the blisters. Can you see all those little bubbles? And then we have the aciago loaf, which is a lot more dense and flat.

[33:28] But I think it's just gonna be equally as delicious. And you can see that this one doesn't have as many blisters, but instead of blisters, there's just like cheese pieces everywhere. This is my sprinkle loaf. There's no question that this one was cooked.

[33:40] It's a little burnt on the top and the bottom, but the sides look really fun and colorful. I bet the inside is gonna be stunning. This one just absolutely looks stunning because the cheese is just squeezing out everywhere and that just looks insane. We can start cutting into some of these.

[33:53] You want to? I bet it's gonna be absolutely amazing stunning. How does it look? Oh, that's so pretty. That is so fun. I'm interested to try this because I usually

[34:06] don't like sweet and tangy mix together. Like I was telling you with the chocolate chips, but we'll see. I'm gonna hold to my opinion that I don't like sweet things mixed in with sourdough. It's not bad, but it's not my favorite.

[34:20] I bought paper bread bags on Amazon because I kept putting this in plastic bags and then it just was getting really steamy and then the bread was getting soggy, so I bought paper ones. My friends won't mind that I give them a loaf of bread with a piece cut out of it. Next, let's do Aussie, I'll go.

[34:34] My favorite. You can't even really see the cheese, but you know it's in there. See, you just squish it and it comes right back up. I don't really know what that means, but I think it's a good sign. Oh, that's delicious. Now, let's cut open the normal one. This might be the most beautiful loaf of bread

[34:47] I've ever made. You wanna see? That's just so pretty. Ban pasta, give me 14 of them right now. Listen to this. I literally cannot stand it anymore. I have to eat this loaf of bread.

[34:59] Okay, you can look first. Oh, it's still steaming. I can see the steam from the back. I know I just cut it in the middle, but I am dying to eat this piece right here on the side because it just looks like cheese everywhere.

[35:12] Oh my goodness. Ah! That is very good. I don't even like pepperoni that much, honestly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[35:24] Well, thank you so much for watching my boring tutorial. I hope it wasn't too boring and I hope it was mildly helpful. I am no bread wizard. So I am open to any tips anyone has or if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments and I'd be happy to try to help.

[35:37] But I'm also just learning. I've only been making sourdough for maybe like six months. Just ever since this baby was born. I'm just kidding, he's like seven years old. Thanks for watching, bye.

[35:49] Yay, you made it to the end of the video, thanks. Does that mean that you want to subscribe? Here's a link to another video that YouTube thinks that you might like and as a reminder, the recipe and all of the links to things that you might need are in the description if you have any questions.

[36:02] Bye.