Follow the Sourdough Day 8 We Bake Bread

Follow the Sourdough Day 8 We Bake Bread Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with the last episode of Follow the Sourdough Day 8. We bake bread finally. It’s only like a week ago we started this. Alright, the dough has risen. It’s more than doubled in size and see when I poke my fingers? See how it doesn’t poke back at me? That dough is risen and ready to go. So we’re going to plop it on our cutting board and we’re going to—let’s call it punch it down. I don’t punch it. I just kind of stretch it and push it down. So basically, we’re going to deflate the dough, which is fine. Don’t worry. Alright, we’re going to kind of stretch in and do a somewhat square oval shape. And then I’m going to turn it over so that the drier side is up. So that’s a side that was the surface. Now, I’m just going to take it, I'm going to roll it into a loaf shape. Now, you don’t want any major pockets but don’t worry about any little small ones. As this rises, it will all seal together. Now, make sure your seam is at the bottom. Don’t worry too much about the ends, so just put it on your cutting board and just kind of shape it into a nice loaf, seam down, the ends are just kind of patted in and that’s it, very simple. On a sturdy baking sheet, you want to sprinkle some cornmeal and you’re going to place your loaf right on top, and we’re going to let this rise until it’s doubled in size. You thought we were going to bake right away. No. We’re going to let this rise, double in size. Now, you got to get a squeeze bottle with water. This is crucial for the baking step and you’ll see why. But as this rises, I don’t want it to dry out. I want the surface to stay kind of elastic. And I don’t like to cover it, some people put a bowl over it. I’m just going to give it a little spritz of water and we’re going to let that rise until it is doubled in size, which you see right there. So that took me about five hours. So again, I’m not going to really give you specific times because it’s going to depend on the temperature and how hard your yeast is. So anyway, mine is risen. I’m going to take a knife and I'm going to give it some slashes about a half inch deep across the surface. That’s just not for looks. It’s partly for looks but it actually will let the bread expand when it cooks. Now, I’m going to prep my oven. I have a pan of water at the bottom, very crucial. I’m going to take my water spray bottle and I’m going to spritz my dough. I’m going to put it in my oven, which is cold and I’m going to put my oven on 425 and I’m going to let the oven heat up with the bread in it. After 10 minutes, it probably will be close to the temperature. I'm going to take it out. I’m going to spritz it with water. I’m going to put it back in. And I’m going to spritz it with water about every 10 minutes, three or four times, okay? So this spritzing with water, you see it making the steam when it hits that pan. That combined with the steam from the water pan in there really gives that crust its beautiful shiny blistered bakery look. So, kind of try to be quick here like I am doing, just give it a spritz, turn it around, give it a spritz, throw it back in so you don’t lose too much heat. And you’re going to bake that. Mine took about 40 minutes. It can go anywhere from 35, 45 minutes depending, and what comes out is the most unbelievably beautiful loaf of bread that have a beautiful crispy crust, at least when it’s freshly baked. By the way, if you’re going to do lots of baking, you got to get one of these cooling racks. You can hear that, that hollow sound when you tap it, you know it’s cooked. And you see those little kind of flaky blisters, that’s really what that water was for and that’s the—the professional ovens actually have steam valves in them. But anyway, you can do that at home with a spray bottle and the pan of water in the over, and there you go. Now, you know how they say it’s the journey, not the destination. With this project, it’s both. The journey is fun. It’s kind of dangerous. It’s kind of science experiment. But when you’re done, you get the bread. And I hope yours came out. It probably didn’t. It takes some practice but I hope you got the bug now to try to make sourdough. Check the site, watch all the videos and make some sourdough. Enjoy!