It's not called sourdough in Italy, instead you have to look for pane di lievito madre at the supermarket bakery section or pane a lievitazione naturale or sometimes just pasta madre. If I lived in Abruzzo I'd happily buy any of the various loaves offered daily by Mercato del Pane but given that I'm in Lucca and Tuscan bread is my least favorite bread, especially for breakfast, I make my own sourdough a couple of times every week.
Most small bakeries in Italian villages don't have the time or resources to make complex breads so all their loaves tend to be baked simply and quickly using only lievito di birra and the bread is dull and uninteresting as a result.
As this easy sourdough is my regular daily bread I don't want to fuss over it too much, instead I keep it very simple. I want great tasting bread, very nutritious bread, a very straightforward process and consistently reliable results whatever the temperature of my kitchen, which can vary from 15°C to 32°C over the course of the year.
Straightforward for me means observing the following 5 steps:
1. Using the very best flour where all the natural goodness and nutrients in the wheat have been preserved, ie look for organic and stone-ground flours.
2. Stretching and folding the dough several times with no real kneading and very little time spent doing anything much at all with the dough, so bread making does not become a time-consuming chore. In fact there's a total of only about 30 minutes of mixing or folding the dough and the rest of the time it's left alone to do it's thing.
3. A medium hydration level of 70% which means that the dough is sufficiently easy to handle. Sourdough recipes range anywhere from 60% to 80% hydration so why make the whole process unnecessarily harder when 70% works just fine.
4. The addition of 1 gram of fresh yeast (or a maximum of 2 grams if the kitchen is cold in the winter) which means that this is a hybrid dough rather than a full 100% sourdough. The reason I do this, especially during the cooler months when my kitchen temperature is never above 18°C, is that it makes the second rise more predictable and the overall process much quicker, without detracting at all from the flavor. Sourdough purists can grumble all they want but this delivers perfect results every time whatever the temperature of my kitchen and I only care about the final flavor and texture of my daily bread.
5. The use of oven paper, a proving basket and a dutch oven so that I don't need to handle the actual dough at all after the final shaping and I don't have to fuss about humidity in the oven when baking.
My sourdough starter is now 8 years old and was originally from a baking class in Brooklyn; since then it has spent several longish periods in the freezer and many more shorter stays in the fridge and seems impossible to kill, but these days it is mostly on the kitchen work surface multiplying, which is what it should be doing.
This time of year in an 18 to 19°C kitchen this bread takes about 15-16 hours from mixing the dough to eating the bread.
Ingredients for a large loaf of about 1.2kg (2.65 lbs)
Flour:
60g Integrale biologica (organic whole wheat)
170g Miracolo tipo '1' (ancient grains from the province of Parma)
200g Macina a Pietra tipo '1' (stone ground)
200g Multicereale biologica manitoba tipo '0' (organic flour consisting of 90% manitoba and 10% from 5 different cereal grains)
=630g total flour (Hydration percentage: 70%)
420g room temperature water
140g sourdough starter (50/50 flour and water)
2g fresh yeast
15g salt
Sprinkling of 4 different types of seeds: sesame, chia, poppy and flax
Directions:
Day 1: Feed the sourdough starter with equal amounts of flour and water up to 24 hours before making the bread.
Day 2: Make the bread
1. Add the salt to 20g of water and reserve for later.
2. Mix the sourdough starter, fresh yeast and remaining 400g water in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl mix all the various flours and seeds, then combine with the first bowl and mix well, stretching and folding it forcefully for a few minutes with a wet hand inside the bowl until there's nothing left attached to the sides of the bowl.
4. After 30 minutes rest, add the reserved 20g water and salt to the dough and incorporate by the pincer method. Then stretch and fold for a few minutes inside the bowl pushing down with your fist until it's quite smooth and the sides of the bowl are clean. Cover with a damp cloth.
5. After a further 1 hour rest, tip the dough out onto a damp counter top and stretch and fold about 12-15 times, at which point you will feel resistance as it tightens. Put back in the bowl smooth side up and cover again with a damp cloth.
After initial mix (above left) and after mixing and folding with the salt (above right)
6. After another 1 hour rest, repeat the previous instruction.
7. After a further 1-2 hours rest (depending on kitchen temperature), repeat again the previous instruction. Handle it gently now so as not to degas the dough. Leave on the counter smooth side up.
8. After 30 minutes rest, turn the dough over onto a dusting of flour and shape the dough by folding the sides in and rolling it up like a fat sausage into the shape of your basket. Line the basket with oven paper and drop the dough into it with the seam side on the bottom.
9. Spray the dough in the basket with a mist of water and put uncovered into the fridge overnight for around 10 hours but it can be left much longer to suit your own timetable.
After 4-5 hours bulk rise it's ready for the fridge (above left) and after 10 hours or more in the fridge it's ready to bake (above right)
Day 3: Bake
1. Preheat your oven (with the empty dutch oven inside) to 250°C or thereabouts.
2. Sprinkle on some flour if you want to achieve the look in the top photo. After scoring the bread in the basket, lift it out together with the oven paper and put it inside the hot dutch oven, close the lid and set the timer for 85 minutes. Keep the temperature at maximum for the first 10 minutes only, then reduce to 200°C for the remaining 75 minutes.
3. Remove the lid of the dutch oven when there are 30 minutes remaining and then remove the bread completely from the oven paper and dutch oven when there are about 20 minutes remaining.
4. During these final 30 minutes leave the oven door slightly open for 2-3 minutes a couple of times to allow all the steam to escape and so the bread crust can become a little crunchier.
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