Overnight sourdough with sprouted wheat

Thanks to quarantine, I decided to get out my crusty (but trusty!) 7 years dormant starter and bake some sourdough bread again.  I was really excited to find that there are a number of overnight, mostly no-knead sourdough recipes available now and after trying out a couple of them, I finally settled on my own variation of High Hydration Sourdough from the book Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.

I always find it really helpful to see the step-by-step recipes with pictures, so that's what I've posted here.  It's a really simple recipe with consistently great results and a nice way to ease into sourdough baking!

Formula

50 g active starter

375 g warm water

450 g KA Sir Lancelot bread flour*

50 g KA Sprouted wheat flour

9 g fine salt

*The original recipe calls for 500 g of bread flour, but I found that substituting some of that with sprouted wheat improves the flavor without affecting the fermentation or final texture of the bread.

Starter

Morning - Remove starter from fridge. Feed AP flour and water.

I keep a very small amount of starter on hand, usually 1 or 2 tbsp, and it usually lives in the fridge.  On the day that I plan to start the dough, I pull it out in the morning and feed it enough all purpose flour and water to make about 1/4 cup bubbly starter by evening, plus a little more to tuck back into the fridge.  This is what it looks like just before I weight it out for the dough.

Autolyse

7:30 p.m. - Mix all flour with 1 1/4 cup of the total water.  Reserve the rest of the water for loosening up starter.

After weighing out the flour and water individually, I add all but ~1/4 cup of the water to the flours. After a very rough mix, I cover the flour + water mixture and allow it to rest for 1 hr before the starter and salt are introduced.  The dough is very shaggy at this point.

Dough

8:25 p.m. - Add 50 g of active starter to the reserved water and mix. 

8:30 p.m. - Add hydrated starter and salt to the autolysed flour.

Even with a fairly high hydration starter, I find that it is really hard to evenly mix it into the autolysed, partially-hydrated flour, so I've started reserving a portion of the total water content to disperse and loosen up my starter before I add it to the flour.

I mix the dough by hand until it is roughly homogeneous (can't feel overly wet or dry clumps), and let it rest for a few minutes.  The dough still feels sticky and really doesn't look like much at this point.

Stretch and fold and good night

8:45 - 9:30 p.m. - Stretch and fold the dough 3 times at approximately equal time intervals. 

9:30 p.m. - Cover dough and ferment overnight at room temperature.

It always surprises me how easily the dough comes together with just a series of stretch and folds.  It goes from looking like a slurry to a less sticky, supple, and elastic mass. 

After 1st stretch and fold:

After 2nd stretch and fold:

After 3rd stretch and fold:

This is when I say good night and see you in the morning.  I cover it up and it ferments on the countertop at room temperature overnight.

Shaping

7 a.m. - Empty dough onto floured countertop and shape (into a boule in this case). Cover and rest.

7:20 a.m.  - Shape dough a second time.  Place in floured banneton.

The dough looks very lively in the morning!  While I've been sleeping, the bacteria and yeast are hard at work turning last night's flat lump into today's airy dough.  It increases considerably in volume and you can see all kinds of bubbles on the surface.

I use a bench scraper to coax the dough onto a floured countertop, dimple the dough gently with floured fingers, and stretch it out slightly.  I then fold the edges into the center to make a rounded form and flip it over.  I gently pull and roll the ball towards me to develop a smooth top surface.  This is the first shaping.  I allow the dough to rest (and spread!) before the second shaping.

After 1st shaping:

And then, I shape it again, developing a little bit more surface tension the second time, before I place it in a floured banneton.

I didn't quite understand all the fuss about shaping the dough twice - until I did it!  I noticed that I was able to pull the dough into a much tighter ball and the resulting crumb was much more open.  

After 2nd shaping, top side down into banneton:

Chill

7:30 a.m. - Chill the shaped dough for at least 1 hr (or more!) covered in the fridge.

This looks something like this for me:

At this point, the dough is essentially in a holding pattern.  I can pop the dough out and bake it whenever it is convenient to do so.  Chilling the dough at this stage also seems to help the dough hold its shape and all that surface tension I worked hard to develop.

Bake

8:20 a.m. - Preheat oven and dutch oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

8:30 a.m. - Bake bread covered in dutch oven for 20 minutes, uncovered another 20 minutes, then directly on oven rack another 10 minutes.

I flip the dough out of the banneton and directly onto a sheet of parchment paper.  The parchment paper makes it easier to gently drop the dough into the hot dutch oven.  I slash the top surface, usually in a crescent moon shape, before I place it into the hot dutch oven, covered.

After 20 minutes of baking, the bread begins to reach the glass lid from oven spring.  This is when the lid comes off and it bakes in the dutch oven for 20 minutes more.

I then pop it out of the dutch oven and bake 10 minutes more or until the crust is evenly colored.

After the ~50 minute bake, I turn the oven off and crack the oven door open.  I leave the bread in the slowly cooling oven for another 20 minutes to cure the crust.

And we have delicious bread!  Oh yeah and the dreadful wait for it to cool  :)

 Happy baking!