Sourdough Baking 102: Master Sourdough Breads at Home

1. Introduction to the Course: Sourdough baking is the most magical way of making bread. It is the process of mixing wild yeast with basic ingredients like flour, water, and salt, and creating loaves packed with flavor and nutrition. In this class, I want to take you on this amazing sourdough bread baking journey. Welcome to this class. My name is Shubranshu. I'm a professionally-trained baker and chef from Le Cordon Bleu. I've been working with sourdough breads for more than a decade, and I want to share my knowledge and experience with you in this class. We start this class by learning the basics such as the tools required, types of flours, understanding low temperature, and the fermentation process. Then we move on to our first recipe, which is a beginner sourdough loaf. This is an amazing loaf to make as a beginner and with our concepts like autolyse, stretch and folds, pre-shaping, and final shaping a boule shape. You will also learn how to score and bake the bread in a Dutch oven. The second recipe is a s pelt loaf which is a slightly more advanced bread with higher hydration. Building on the concepts of the previous recipe, we will be adding new techniques such as making a levain, slap and folds, shaping a batard with stitching method, and I will also explain in detail the scoring method to get an amazing ear on the bread. This class also comes with detailed recipe notes so you can master the breads easily at home. Baking sourdough bread at home can seem really intimidating, but once you learn the techniques in this class, you'll actually be able to make better breads than your local bakery. 2. Class Outline and Project: Thank you for enrolling in this class. In this lesson, we'll just briefly go over the class outline as well as the class project for this class. The class is basically divided into three sections. The first section, we look at some of the really important concepts you need to learn as a baker like the tools you need, types of flours, dough percentages, dough temperatures. The second section, we cover two recipes, which is your beginner sourdough loaf, as well as the Spelt loaf. The third section, we just look at some of the most commonly asked questions, as well as solutions to mistakes you might make. For the class project, it would be really nice if you share a picture of any one recipe you make at home so that I can critique and also help you become better. I'm really excited to begin this class. Let's have a look at how you can download the class materials so it'll be really easy for you to set a follow on with the recipes. Let's have a look how to download the resources. The resources are in the fourth tab, which come under projects and resources. If you click the fourth tab and you click on the attachment file, the PDF file, and let it download. When you open it, you'll see all the tips, the recipes, and all the information on the class, which will really help you and guide you throughout the class. 3. Tools for Sourdough Baking: In this lesson, I'm going to show you some of the tools which are super-helpful in our side of baking journey. Let's start with the most useful one, which is a scale. I would highly recommend you to get an electronic scale, so you can measure everything really accurately. In bread baking, scale is super-useful. Bakeries, we always measured on a scale, so we can get exactly the amount we need. The second one is a thermometer. A thermometer is super useful because we need to actually check the temperature of the dough when we mix it, as far as when we're fermenting it just to maintain a good control over the dough and the fermentation. Even in the bakery, we use thermometer. Every stage of the process, we use it, and we actually write down the temperature at every stage. At home as well, definitely you can use this just to improve on your baking. The next one is a tool that we use the most as a baker, a bench knife and a dough scraper. Now, this is super useful when you're working with doughs, when you are self portioning dough or you're shaping dough, as well as when you're taking dough out of your mixing bowl, this will be so useful. It's just like an extension of our hand and I would highly recommend to get this. Because it just makes it so easy to handle the dough and especially because we are working with super wet doughs, it's super useful to use these. The next one is parchment paper. Parchment paper, we usually use when we're going to bake the loaf just to put the loaf on it so it doesn't burn and also it just gets a nice crust as well. The next one is a bread knife. It's a super useful when you're cutting the bread after it's baked just to get it really nice slice. Because if you use any other knife, you won't be able to get a nice cut and our bread is also super crunchy from the outside. Next one is a mixing bowl. Mixing bowl you can use anything, honestly. I just like using a glass one. This is a Pyrex mixing bowl. You can use a steel one as well, that also works completely fine. You can also use these tubs. That's what we use in the bakery, we use these big plastic tubs. Anything is fine as long as the dough can remain insulated and the heat can be maintained in the dough. Next one is a brush. I usually use a brush when I have to dust off flour when I take the dough out of the banneton, as well as I have a lot of flour on the surface as well just to dust it off. It's quite nice to use it in that case. For our sourdough starter, I like using this container. It's like a Tupperware container, which just maintains all the heat inside. It's quite thick plastic. You can also use a glass container, that's completely fine. But don't use a metal container because metal and the starter don't really work too well, so make sure to use a glass or a plastic one. The final one is a spatula. Now, this is super useful when you're making starter, just to take out and scrape off all the sourdough starter, as well as when you're taking out the starter off the container, this is super useful. I'll put the lengths of all these products in the recipe notes so you can just use them as a reference if you want to purchase them. Now, these tools are going to be used when we actually prepare the loaf. But now let's move on to the tools we need when we actually prove and bake the loaf. Let's have a look at the tools we'll be using for proofing and baking the dough. For proofing, I like using these proofing baskets. Now if you don't have these, you can also use a glass bowl or any bowl for that matter lying with a cloth and a little bit of rice flour, so that'll work really well. But these ones I find really nice because the dough can actually breathe through these ridges, so it's quite nice to prove the bread in this. I put all the details of sizes in the recipe notes. The next one is a baking steel. Now the baking steel you'll need if you are baking the loaf without a Dutch oven so that we can get really good heat from the bottom of the oven and the bread can rise really nicely. Also, the baking steel is really useful if you're making begets. Even for pizza, if you're making silo pizza, it'd be really nice to use this. The next one and the most important one is the Dutch oven. This is about a five-liter Dutch oven, and it's roughly about 10 inches in length. Now a Dutch oven is super nice to bake bread in because you don't actually need to steam the bread that much. Because it acts as a baking vessel in which this steam basically traps inside and also traps inside a lot of heat so the bread really rises nicely. [NOISE] If you have a Dutch oven, you don't necessarily need a baking steel. You can use this in any oven, so it's super nice to use this. Next one is a cooling rack. After you bake the bread, it's super-important to cool them down so all the moisture can evaporate and the bread turns out really nice and light. A cooling rack is super-useful in that case. The next one is a spray bottle. Now, this is just to create steam in the oven when you load the bread in the Dutch oven or directly on the baking steel. Steam is super important for the bread to rise, as well as it delays the setting of the crust. I always use a spray bottle when I'm baking bread. The last one is a lame. You can just use a blade, any shaving blade will do. Or you can just attach a skewer to the blade like this. You can basically use this to score the bread. You can also use a paintbrush, you can use so many things to put this blade in. Now I've seen online these lamps for like $10-15, you don't need to pay that much. You can just make it on your own. Just get a really nice sharp blade and you can make it at home. These are some of the tools I really like using for proofing and baking, and I'll put the links of all of them so you can have a look if you're interested. I hope this helps you gather all the tools and you can be prepared when you're making the loaf. 4. Different Flours in Sourdough Baking: In this lesson, let's try to understand the different types of flours we use inside our baking, as well as how they look like and when you can use them and also the protein content and the texture of the bread you get when you use them. The first one is cake flour. If you look at the cake flour and compare it to the rest, this one is probably the most whitest one. It's got the least amount of protein, it's got about maybe six to eight percent of protein. It's really good to make cakes with it and sponges with it, but not exactly bread, because it doesn't have that much gluten and it won't be able to absorb so much water, so the dough won't be nice and it won't be airy. I would not use cake flour when I'm making sourdough bread. But you can definitely use them if you're making biscuits or cookies, or even cakes. The second one is all-purpose flour. This one is slightly less whiter than the cake flour. This one you can use to make breads, but I generally tend to prefer bread flour. But you can also use this if you can't access bread flour for some reason. This has got about eight to 10 percent of protein and it actually makes really good pizzas or it's a really good sort of these biscuits and scones. But it's not really ideal for sourdough if you're making high hydration breads. If you're making low hydration breads, you can definitely use all-purpose flour as well. The next one is bread flour. Now, this one is super good if you want to make higher hydration sourdoughs with really open cram because it's got about 12-14 percent protein and it also forms really strong gluten strands, it basically traps all the air and the bread can expand really well. It also basically traps a lot of water as well, so the dough doesn't become really slack, it holds its shape. This is the best flour to use to make sourdough bread. The next one is these are heritage flours, that's wholemeal, spelt, and rye. Now when you use these three flours, I generally like to mix it with bread flour when I use it because sometimes if you just use them, your bread can be really dense. The first one is wholemeal flour, now wholemeal flour is super healthy. Now if you touch the flour, you can see these grains there, that's the germ and the bran, that is the outer layer of the wheat grain. Now because it has germ and bran in it, it's super healthy, it's got a lot of fiber, but it just makes the bread a little bit dense if you just use this. But it's got really amazing flavor. I like to use this in combination with the bread flour when I'm making the bread. You can use up to 50 percent wholemeal and 50 percent bread flour. The next one is Spelt flour. Now, spelt flour is incredibly healthy because it's actually a heritage grain. It's a really whole grain of wheat. Also this one as well if you touch it, you can feel a slide like this, graininess of the germ and the bran. This has got about a protein content of roughly about 12-14 percent. But the protein content actually does not emphasize the gluten in the dough because of the germ and bran in it. When you mix the dough, what happens is the germ and bran cut through the gluten strands and makes the dough a little bit weaker and a little bit dense as well. This one as well, I like using in combination with bread flour. Our second recipe, we're going to be using spelt flour in the dough. Why I really like using this flour is because it's super easy to digest, as well as the flavor profile you get in the sourdough bread is so tasty. The next one and the final one is rye flour. Now rye flour is really high in organic matter. If you're starting off your sourdough starter, I usually tend to start off with rye flour or spelt flour just to give it a quick start because it's got such amazing modern nutrition for the sourdough and for the yeast to grow. Also the rye flour dough flavor is really nice. It little bit different, it's a little bit funky, but I quite like it. Now, when we use rye flour as well, I like to mix it with bread flour because it actually doesn't form really strong gluten strands. Even though it's got a protein content of 12-14 percent, still it doesn't actually, when you mix it together, it actually doesn't hold together really nicely. If you want to make a bread with just rye flour, you'll get this cake batter like consistency when you make the dough and you have to bake it in a bread tin, because if you put it on a baking paper without any support, it won't rise at all. With the bread tin because it gets nice amount of support, it tends to rise. But the batter is exactly like cake batter. It's also quite nice to make actually, it's quite delicious. I hope this helps you understand the properties of different flour and when you can use them. Also keep experimenting with different flours as well, just to see what texture you get in your dough, as well as different flavor profiles as well. 5. Importance of Dough Temperature : In this lesson, we'll try to understand the concept of dough temperature. Dough temperature is one of the most important concepts to understand as a baker, especially when it comes to sourdough bread baking. So imagine dough temperature has another ingredient which you use when you make bread because it actually helps us control the fermentation as far as the flavor of the dough. So when we work in professional bakeries, we always keep checking the temperature of the dough so that it's not getting over fermented or it's not getting under fermented as well. So how do you actually calculate this? How do you control the dough temperature? So when we actually calculate it, we take basically four elements. One is the temperature of the room, temperature of the water, temperature of our sourdough startup, and the temperature of our flour. Now among these four, we know three of them, but we don't know the temperature of the water. So water is what we can control. The rest of them will be at room temperature. That is how we calculate the temperature of the water and we manipulate the temperature of the dough. So if you are basically in a cold environment, you'll be using slightly warmer water. But if you're in a tropical environment, you won't be using warm water, you'll actually be using cold water. So when people say that you always have to use warm water when you make bread, that's actually not correct. So in case if you use warm water, if you're making bread in a tropical country, the dough will definitely over ferment. So be really careful when you calculate the temperature of the water when you're mixing the dough. So actually let's learn to an example how we can calculate it. So you can also apply this to your room temperature. This is a super, super important thing to learn because once you master this, you'll be able to better control the fermentation in your dough, as well as develop really good flavor in the dough. The ideal temperature we are trying to infer is anywhere between 24-27 degrees Celsius. Now, this is the temperature where good bacteria grows in our dough as well as it doesn't get too acidic. So the variables which go in calculating the dough temperature is flour, water, starter temperature, and room temperature. So among these four, we know three of them and the only one we need to calculate is water. So floor temperature is equal to the room temperature because I'm storing flour at room temperature. So today it's about 30 degrees Celsius. So the flour will also be about 30 degrees Celsius and starter as well because I fed it and it's still at room temperature. So this will also be about 30 degrees Celsius. So now what we need to calculate is the water temperature. We also know that if we multiply 27 into 4, which is the ideal temperature. If you multiply that by 4, we get 108 degrees Celsius. So the total of these four should be about this much. So if we subtract the sum of these, which is 90, we'll be able to get the temperature of the water. So that'll be about 18 degrees Celsius. So in this case, this will be our water temperature when we mix the dough. So that is why it's super important to calculate the water temperature because most people say that you need to use warm water whenever you're making bread but that's not actually true. In case if you use warm water here your dough will ferment too fast and we get really sticky and really wet. That is why you need to use temperature, so you need to use water which is at a lower temperature. Now, what happens if you live in a tropical country and if it's really hot. So let's calculate in that case. So say it's 40 degrees Celsius in your room. So this is also 40 and this is also 40. So if you add three of them, this comes to about 120. So that means your water actually has to be cold, you have to probably put ice in your water when you mix the dough. It has to be say minus 12 degrees in temperature. So that is why I'm saying that if you, for example, if you live in a tropical country and if you use water, which is like say 30 degrees Celsius, your dough temperature will be super high and your bread if it needs to ferment in three, four hours, it'll just ferment in one hour. So that is why it's super important to know how to calculate the water temperature to get the ideal dough temperature. So when we make our recipes, we'll basically check the temperature of the dough through a thermometer in every stage and we're making and developing the dough. So in this case, what I would do is I will be actually using the fridge as well for bulk fermentation if my temperature of the dough gets super high. The same can also be said if your room temperature is really cold. In that case, you will be basically using a warm room or you can even use your oven like just turn it off, put the light on, or put a bowl of hot water in your oven just so that it can become a nice and warm environment for your dough. So perfect. So I hope you understand this concept and I hope you can apply this as well in your baking. 6. Understanding Dough Percentages: In this lesson, we'll be understanding the concept of dough percentages. Now, as a baker, we never think of recipes in grams, we always think of it as percentages. Tomorrow if I go to work at the bakery no one's going to tell me how many grams I need to make in a recipe. They always tell me what is the hydration percent, what is the yeast, what is the salt? When you know the percentage, you can actually scale up or scale down the recipe really easily. When we actually calculate the percentages, we always take flour as 100 percent and we calculate everything else based on flour. For example, if we have one kilo of flour, we have say, 700 grams of water, that's 70 percent hydration. If I need to make any recipe in the bakery, my colleague will tell me how much hydration I need to make. He'll tell me that it's 70 percent hydration, so I know exactly how much water to use and I can calculate how much dough I need to make. If I need to make five kilos of dough, I know that is 70 percent hydration, so I need to use 3.5 kilos of water. When you think about an in percentage terms, you'll be able to remember recipes so easily and you can make so many different types of recipes. Let's learn through an example, the baker's percentages of our basic loaf. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to calculate the dough percentages and I'm going to show you the recipe as well as the dough percentages for our basic loaf. It's super useful to calculate this because once you know this, you can actually make any amount of dough you want. Flour is always 100 percent [NOISE] and in our recipe that is about 400 grams. We're going to be using white flour. Now because this is 100 percent, all the other percentages, they'll be calculated based on flour. For example, the water in this recipe is about 260 grams. Now if I want to calculate the percentage of the water, which is called the hydration, I basically divide 260 by 400, which comes out to about 65 percent hydration. In bakeries, usually when we make different types of recipes, we always look at the percentages. We don't look at the actual grams which go in the recipes. This is a 65 percent hydration loaf. Now if I want to make it more better, I'll increase the hydration. Or if I want to reduce it, if I want to make a 60 percent hydration, I'll basically calculate 60 percent of this and then I'll use that much amount of water. That it is why it's super useful to know this concept. Salt is always two percent of the flour. So 2 percent of 400 grams is eight grams. In most recipes we make, salt will always be about two percent of flour. In other recipes you see online as well, it's generally between 1.5-2 percent. It's quite easy to calculate. The next one is starter. This starter we're using is roughly about 90 grams. Now starter can be anywhere between 20-30 percent of the flour. In our case this is about 22 percent. Now you can also increase this up to 30 percent if you like. But I like using anywhere between 20-30 percent. Today we're going to be using about 22 percent of starter. Now if I want to increase the recipe, what I can do is, I can use these percentages and basically calculate. If I want to mix say five kilos of flour, I can basically calculate the water. I can just do like 65 percent of 5 kilos and then I can calculate the water. I can also calculate the salt accordingly. This concept is super useful, especially when you're making bulk quantities in bakery, this is so helpful to know. Also when you make this dough, this is a 65 percent hydration loaf, which is not super high in hydration, but it's not also low. It's somewhere in the middle. In the next recipe we make, we'll be making about 71 percent hydration. You'll see the difference in the dough as far. I hope you could learn this concept and I hope this concept helps you. 7. Beginner Sourdough Loaf: Autolyse : In this lesson, we'll be learning our first recipe, which is a basic sourdough loaf. This is a really nice recipe to learn, if you're just a beginner and just starting out with your sourdough baking journey, because it covers a lot of basic techniques which you need further on, if you want to make higher hydration doughs. This dough has a hydration of 65 percent. Now that is not super high, but it's not super low as well. You can't actually knead the dough, you have to stretch and fold the dough, to develop it. Some of the techniques we will be learning are orderlies, stretch and fold, how to basically shape the dough, how to proof it, and how to scour it. Also how to bake it in a Dutch oven. I'm really looking forward to start this lesson, so let's begin. The day before you make the bread, I'm going to feed the starter, so I can use it tomorrow morning. Currently it's about 9:00 PM. As you can see that my starter is really inactive. I cannot use this to make bread. What I'll do is I'll discard almost all of it, keep about one tablespoon, and feed it roughly about 100 grams of water, and 100 grams of flour. Tomorrow morning, it should be really nice and active. With the discard, I'm going to use it to make pancakes tomorrow. Keep that much, roughly about one tablespoon. That much? That much is good. Now I'm going to feed it 100 grams of water [NOISE] and just mix it. Take all the starter from the sides as well, and add the plain flour. This is just some white purpose flour. [NOISE] This should be ready in roughly about 10-12 hours. If I want to bake it tomorrow morning, it should be ready. [NOISE] Just mix it really nicely, [NOISE] just clean the sides nicely as well. [NOISE] Perfect. Just cover it and set it aside. [NOISE] I will also put a label here which is 9:00 PM, so I remember exactly when I fed it. Let's have a look at this tomorrow when we make the bread. In this lesson we're going to be learning how to make the dough for a sourdough bread. Before we begin, let's have a look at this starter, which we fed last night. [NOISE] As you can see, it's become really nice and vigorous. It's got a lot of air inside it. When we fed it yesterday it was here so it is almost 2.5 times the size. That looks really nice. You can see a lot of air bubbles on the top. [NOISE] Before we begin, I'll just briefly run you through the ingredients. I'm using some bread flour here. This has a protein content of about 12 percent. I'm just using white bread flour. I'm not going to put any whole meal flour or rye flour because this is a basic loaf, and this is just to build your foundation. Just go with white flour because it's the most versatile and you won't have any problems making bread with it. The next one is salt. When I use salt, make sure to hydrate it really well so you don't have any salt crystals which don't get mixed in the dough. Next ingredient is water. Whenever I use the water, I always check the temperature. In my case, it should be about 26-27 degrees. Let's check. It's roughly about 27 degrees. That's perfect. Now, this completely depends on your room temperature, so just calculate based on that. This, I feel, is one of the most important factors, to get good fermentation in your sourdough. Today, when we use the water, we'll basically keep one tablespoon aside, which we'll put in this salt because we want to dissolve this salt really bad. Also, when I make this dough, I actually put the water first in the bowl, I dissolve the starter in it, then I put the flour in it. Now, the reason I do that, is because I find that it dissolves much better. If you just put the water in the flour, sometimes you get dry bits, which don't get nicely hydrated. I prefer doing it like this. First step, what I'll do is I'll put the water, just keep one tablespoon. [NOISE] Just a little bit more. Just about that much is good [NOISE]. Put that in the water. [NOISE] Just make sure your salt is nicely hydrated and you don't get any bits of chunks of salt which won't get hydrated. Perfect. That looks good. [NOISE] Now let's weigh out our starter. [NOISE] In this recipe, we're going to be using 90 grams of starter. [NOISE] Put it on a scale, make sure it's at 0, and just check the consistency of the starter, then you'll understand that you also need the same consistency. [NOISE] See how that floats in the water. That's really nice. Usually I don't use the float test, I just look at it and I just gauge if it's got enough air in it because float test sometimes it doesn't work properly, but if you trust your eyes, you'll definitely get there. It should just be really airy. Just a little bit more. [NOISE] Perfect. It's 90 grams. Now, what I'll do, is I'll just dissolve all this starter in the water, so it disperses really well. [NOISE] Just use your hands here. [NOISE] Perfect. Now, just go straight in and add the flour. [NOISE] Now, you'll notice that I'm not going to be adding the salt in this stage because this stage is called the orderlies and I want the starch in the flour to get really nicely hydrated. Now if I add this salt at this stage what happens is that, it draws a lot of moisture away from the flour and the flour doesn't get really nicely hydrated. This is super useful especially when you're making sourdough and just bread doughs in general. [NOISE] It's really nice to do that. [NOISE] Just mix it together. At this stage, we want all the flour to get hydrated. We won't be developing gluten at this stage, we just want to mix everything together. [NOISE] This dough doesn't have that much hydration, that is why I think it's a really nice dough to begin with. [NOISE] Once you master this, you can actually keep increasing the hydration. [NOISE] I'm just going to keep mixing it for maybe about a minute, and then I'll show you how the dough looks like. [NOISE] I've been mixing this for about a minute now, and you can see that the flour is nicely hydrated. Just use your bench scraper, and scrape all the dough bits away from your hand. The bench scraper is super useful in this case because you don't want to waste the dough and also you want to keep your hands clean. Just take as much as you can from your hands. [NOISE] Perfect. Also, make sure you scrape down the bowl from the side [NOISE]. That's good. We're going to just set this aside for 45 minutes now. Just cover it with a wet cloth, so that the flour can get really nicely hydrated. Then we'll add the salt, and then I'll show you how to develop the gluten in the dough. Before I cover the dough, make sure to check the temperature, just to see if you're at the right. This is slightly more. We are slightly above 27 degrees, but I know that the weather is going to cool down slightly so the dough temperature will come down to about 27. I'm not super fussed about it, I think it's still fine. Let's cover this [NOISE] and just set it aside. 8. Beginner Sourdough Loaf: Stretch and Folds: After 45 minutes, the autolyse process is complete. Now we're going to add the salt and the water. Just make sure that the salt is nicely dissolved. Just add it straight in. Now when you mix the salt in the dough, what I like doing is just pinching it inside, just like this. So you make sure that the salt evenly distributes throughout the dough. I'm going to keep pinching this for about a couple of minutes until I can't feel any salt on my hands. After a couple of minutes, now, I'm going to start developing the dough. Before you do this, put the wet cloth below the bowl, so that it doesn't move that much. To develop it, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to keep pulling it like this. This will basically develop the gluten in the dough. Just keep doing this for about a couple of minutes. Then you'll get a slightly more smoother dough. It shouldn't stick to your hand as well. After a couple of minutes of mixing the dough, you can feel like it's not sticking as much to my hand. It feels more smoother. If you stretch it, it feel more smoother and the salt should be completely dissolved. At this point, what I'm going to do is just roll it into a bowl and put it back in the bowl. I'm going to set this aside for 30 minutes and then we're going to start our stretch and fold process. Stretch and fold process is basically a really nice way to develop gluten in the side dough, because you can't actually knead this dough. It's quite bad. That is why stretch and fold actually helps us develop a lot of structure in the dough. Just cover this, and set it aside for 30 minutes. Then we will start developing the gluten in the dough. It's been 30 minutes. Now it's time to start our stretch and fold process. This is a way to develop gluten in the dough. Because this is super wet, so we can't actually knead it. That is why we have to do stretch and fold. When you do this step, make sure you have a bowl of water. Because we're going to dip our hands in the water and give the stretch and folds, so it doesn't stick to your hand. This time, I'm going to give about 20 stretch and folds. To do this, we stretch it and take it to the other corner. You keep repeating this process. As we move on this stretch and fold process, we'll become more and more gentle with the dough, so that we don't deflate it, and the gases remain inside the dough. But this time you can be more aggressive, because we just started the gluten development process. I've given the dough 20 stretch and folds. Now look at the dough, it feels so smooth. When we started it, it was so wet, but now it shouldn't stick to your hand. That is really good. Just shape it into a round ball, and set it aside for 30 minutes, and we'll give our second stretch and folds. Before I do this, let's check the temperature. It's roughly about 27.6 degrees. It's come down to our range of 27, 28. That's really good. Just cover the dough and set it aside for 30 minutes. It's time to give the dough the second turn. So let's have a look at the dough. It looks quite nice. It's rising quite well. The side of starter is working. For our second turn, we're going to be giving 10 stretch and folds. As we progress, be more and more gentle with the dough. Don't press it too much. Because we don't want to degas it too much. Perfect. That looks good to me. Just make it into a rough round ball. Nice. That looks good. Let's cover this. Then we'll give the third stretch and fold after 30 minutes. It's time to give our dough the third stretch and fold. Now we'll be super gentle with the dough. Now this time, I'll only give six stretch and folds, because I can see that there are gases forming here, and I don't want to deflate them. Just be really gentle. Perfect. Just put it back like that. That's it. Just cover it, and in half an hour we'll give our final stretch and fold. It's time to give the final turn to the dough. The dough has risen quite well and I'm super happy with that. Step it up and really light. This time as well I'll just give like four turns and be super gentle with it. We want to maintain the gases in the dough. Just stretch it. Really gentle. That's it. That's done, and that's ready for our bulk fermentation stage. The bulk fermentation stage can take anywhere between one to three hours. Completely depends on how good your starter is, how strong it is as far as the dough temperature, and the temperature of your room. I'll show you the dough after one hour, just to see how much it's risen. Then I'll show you the consistency of the dough, when it's ready for pre-shaping as well. Just set this aside for one hour, and we'll have a look at it then. 9. Beginner Sourdough Loaf: Pre Shaping and Final Shaping: It's been one hour. Let's have a look at the dough now. It's so nicely risen. In your case, it might not rise this fast. It might take two hours or even three hours, but just give it time. This is ready to pre-shape. How do I know that? Firstly, it's about 50 percent more size than when I shaped it. Secondly, you'll see that it'll start forming this dome shape on the sides. It'll start coming off from the side like that. That means that it's ready to be shaped. Just go on the visual cues. Don't go exactly on the time I tell you because it can completely depend on the temperature and also on your starter as well. When I pre-shape the dough, actually when I do it at the bakery, what we do is we use water on the surface and then we pre-shape it. But I think that's a little bit of an advanced technique. What I'll show you is an easy way to do this. We just season the table with some flour. [NOISE] Don't put too much. Just a little bit so it doesn't stick, then very gently just take out of the bowl. It should just fall down on its own. If it's nicely fermented, it shouldn't really stick on the bowl. Once it gets over-fermented, it tends to get become more slack and it feels more red actually if it's over-fermented. But I think this one looks good. Just drag it out. Perfect. With pre-shaping, the reason we do this is just to redistribute the gases in the dough, as well as make it easier for us to do the final shaping. I can do the final shaping right now as well, but I find that doing pre-shaping just helps. This gives that little bit extra tension on the dough and keeps it together really well. To pre-shape it, what you do is you make sure that it's not sticking. [NOISE] Just put a little bit of flour if you think it's sticking. [NOISE] Just take one corner, put it in the center, take one corner, put it in the center, and take this one and put it in the center as well. Flip the dough, and just using the dough-shaper I'm just going to make it and play around more like this just to get it together. Perfect. You see that nice amount of tension on that dough. That's nice and springy. That's good. Just cover this for 30 minutes, and then I'll show you how to the final shaping. While we are resting this, I'm going to show you how to basically season the banneton, which we are going to be proofing this dough in. To season the banneton, I'm going to use a combination of plain flour and rice flour. What rice flour does is that because it's gluten-free and it's a little bit course, it just coats it really well, and the dough doesn't stick that much. You can use plain flour. That's completely fine. But if you use rice flour, even severely now, it helps for the dough not to stick on the banneton. This is nicely seasoned because I've been using it quite a lot. But if you're using it for the first time, what you have to do is you have to do it like this and just get it all on the edges like this. Make sure that all the ridges are completely covered with the rice flour and the plain flour. Just make sure to do this, and this is only if you're seasoning it for the first time. If you use it quite often, it gets really nicely seasoned. Whatever you have left, just tip it over. [NOISE] Perfect. That is right. Make sure that all the sides are nicely covered. It's been 30 minutes, and our dough is nicely rested, so it's slightly spread out. That looks good. For the shaping, there are a lot of techniques to do it. Because we are making a ball, I'll show you a really easy way to shape this. A little bit of flour on top and flip the dough. Perfect. Now, what we do is we just go on here, like this, and then like this, and one more like this. Now you flip it, put a little bit of flour on top, and just make it a little bit more tight. Perfect. Let's make it into a round ball, a little bit of flour on top, and put it in your banneton. Perfect. If you see any open spaces, you can just stitch them like this. It's not necessary. Perfect. A little bit of flour on top, and just shake it a little bit so that it seasons nicely. This usually takes anywhere between 1-2 hours to proof. I'm going to put my Dutch oven to preheat, 250 degrees Celsius because that's also going to take about an hour to proof. Let's have a look at this after one hour. Just cover it with a plastic wrap really loosely, so it doesn't get any skin on top, and set it aside for one hour. 10. Beginner Sourdough Loaf: Baking and Final Result: I've got a Dutch oven here, and this is what we're going to use for baking. [NOISE] This has a really thick side of the base, and it forms a really good medium to bake sourdough because it actually drops all the steam inside and the sourdough rises really well. Before I bake this dough, I like to preheat this for at least one hour at the highest temperature you can take your oven to. In my case, it's about 250 degrees Celsius. It's really nice to get this hot because the bread will rise really nicely as well. Let's put this in the oven to preheat. After one hour of proofing the bread, [NOISE] let's have a look at it. That looks really nice. How do I know it's fully proofed? If you press it, it should leave an indent that shouldn't spring back immediately. That means that there is enough gases in the dough now. If you move it, you should see that slight wobble there. That's really good. Now to prepare for baking, our Dutch oven is nicely preheated and I've got it out now. I have a sheet of baking paper here. Just season it slightly with some flour [NOISE] so that the bottom of the bread doesn't burn. I also have a blade to score the bread. Now, scoring the bed is super important because you want the steam to come out from the loaf. If you don't score it, it'll just open from random areas and you don't want that. You want to basically score it nicely so you get a really nice and airy loaf. I also have a spray bottle to create steam. When I load the bread in the Dutch oven, I'll just spray some water. [NOISE] Now to [NOISE] flip the bread, just do it very gently. Don't be worried about it, it should just fall off on its own. Perfect. [NOISE] If it spreads, just make into a round. [NOISE] Excess flour, if you have any, just take a brush [NOISE] and just get rid of that. [NOISE] I'll just do a really simple scoring. You can do anything honestly. I'll just do a cross here. [NOISE] Let's load this in the Dutch oven. Our Dutch oven is nicely preheated. Just open the lid, [NOISE] put the bread inside, [NOISE] spray the water, and spray the water on the lid as well. [NOISE] Perfect. I'm going to bake this for 20 minutes at 250 degrees Celsius. It's been 20 minutes of baking, let's have a look at the bread. That looks so nice. It's risen really well. I'm going to bake this for 30 more minutes at 220 degrees Celsius. Lower the temperature so that you can get nice color, and it can bake really nicely from inside as well. This is our final loaf, and I already like the color of this. If you want to make it more darker, you can bake it for another 5-10 minutes. But for me this is good. When it's still hot, take it out of the Dutch oven and put it on a cooling rack otherwise it gets really soggy from the bottom. [NOISE] Make sure that you cool it down for at least two hours so that all the moisture can evaporate from the dough as well as it can bake properly. Now if you cut the bread and it's still warm, sometimes it's really gummy from the center. Also, you can't store it for too many days, it gets spoiled really fast. Make sure you cool it down really nicely. Bread has been cooling down for two hours now. Let's cut it. It should feel really light and it shouldn't feel warm at all. When you tap the bottom, [NOISE] it should sound hollow. Let's cut this from the center. [NOISE] Sounds so good. The crust is really nice. [NOISE] That looks so nice. It's a really nice crumb. This dough does not have much hydration, it's just 65 percent. Now what am I looking for? I'm just looking, if you touch it, it should be really soft. [NOISE] Let's take it out. If you press it, [NOISE] it should just come back like that. That's really nice. Let's cut a slice. [NOISE] That looks nice. It's so soft. [NOISE] You see that crumb, it's so open and light. It got these nice fermentation holes here. Just [NOISE] press it and it should just spring back. Super light and airy, and so soft. Let's taste it. [NOISE] That is so nice, the crust. It's got an amazing flavor. Tonight, we're going to eat this. Let's just put some butter, some sea salt, or you can even put some jam, or make a French toast, totally up to you. 11. Spelt Sourdough Loaf: Feeding the Starter and Autolyse: In this lesson, we'll be covering our second recipe, which is a spelt-loaf. Now this is a slightly more advanced recipe than the previous one, and it actually builds on a lot of concepts we learned in the basic loaf. This recipe we'll be making a hydration of 71 percent, so it's slightly more wetter than the previous loaf. We'll also be learning how to make a levain, which is basically a pre-ferment. It's just made from the starter. It's slightly more stronger than just using the starter. Also, we'll be learning the technique of slap and folds to develop the gluten in the dough, because our dough is slightly more wetter. Also we'll be learning how to actually shape the dough by stitching it. That's a really amazing technique, and you probably use it in our professional bakeries as well. I'm really excited to begin the lesson. Let's begin. Let's have a look at this starter we fed last night. You can see that it's really active and nice, you can see all the bubbles at the top of this dough. I fed this exactly the same way we fed the first starter in our first recipe. I took it out of the fridge, just kept one tablespoon and fed at a 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water at 9:00 PM yesterday. After 11 hours, this is what this starter looks like. In this lesson, we're going to make a levain, which is basically a pre-ferment which we make from the mother starter. What we do is we'll just take about 30 grams of our starter and feed it 30 grams of flour and 30 grams of water. We'll be using this levain to make our bread. First, I'm just going to put the water in it. [NOISE] I'm going to weigh 30 grams of starter. That is so active. You see how that's floating in the water; that's perfect. That's about 30 grams, and I'm going to put about 30 grams of flour as well. This is a 1:1:1 feeding, and it should be ready in anywhere between 4-6 hours. Just mix it together really well. The reason I like using this is because it's more stronger than the starter and it just helps the bread rise much better. But if you want, you can use the mother starter as well; that's also completely fine. But this is just a new concept I wanted to introduce, just in case you want to use this. Just make it neutral. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to label it, especially the time I fed it. It's about 8:00 AM right now, and then I can track it how much it rises. I'll just cover it and set it aside. It's been about three hours and let's have a look at the starter now. This started from here, and now it's almost more than double in size. But I want it to rise just a little bit more, and I'll show you the texture inside as well. You can see it smells really fresh and you can see some bubbles as well. I want it to be just a little bit more active. While I rest this for another one hour, I'm going to get on with my orderlies process. For the orderlies, what we have is some water. Now this is at about 31 degrees Celsius. I've got some salt and spelt-flour and bread flour. Orderlies is super important in this bread because we are going to be using a lot of water as far as we using spelt-flour, which needs to be hydrated. Orderlies also helps to reduce the time of developing the dough. It makes it easier for us to develop it, as well as it gives a really nice texture to the bread. It's super easy. What we do is we mix it together, and at this point, you're not going to be adding salt, we'll be adding that later. I'm going to add about all the water except for about one tablespoon, which I'm going to add in the salt. Just reserve about 10-15 ml here, just a bit more. When you have about this much water, I'm just going to add it to the salt. I like doing it because what happens is if we add all the water straight away, sometimes the dough can get really wet, but if we add the water in stages, then the dough forms really nicely, as well as if you hydrate salt, the salt also dissolves really nicely in the dough. Now, when you're mixing this dough, make sure you have a dough scraper at hand so that it doesn't stick to your hand. It's more easier. Let's just start mixing these together. Initially, you think that this is really wet, but don't worry. As we keep developing the dough, it will come together really well. At this point, you don't want to develop too much strengthened dough. We just want to make sure that all the flour is hydrated nicely. [NOISE] I've been mixing this for about 30 seconds now, and you can see the texture of the dough. It's quite wet, but everything is hydrated really nicely. I'm going to stop at this point, use the bench scraper and scrape off all the dough from my hand. Bench scraper is super important. Perfect. Just cover this and set this aside for one hour. Then we'll have a look at the starter as well as we'll add the starter and the salt to it. [NOISE] Just cover it with a plastic wrap and just set it aside. 12. Spelt Sourdough Loaf: Adding Starter and Stretch and Folds : It's been one hour and I want to show you the starter now. Our starter is ready to use. You can see all the bubbles on the top, and also it's almost become like 2 1/2 times its size, so that's really good. If I shake it you can see it's got a lot of air inside it, that's great. Our dough is also nicely hydrated. What I'm going to do is add the starter, and also add the salt at this point. The salt is nicely dissolved as well. Now what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to pinch everything in so that everything nicely combines together. Just like that. We're going to be mixing this for about 1-2 minutes until everything is really nicely combined, and then I'll show you a technique by which we can develop some structure in the dough. Keep just pinching this. After one minute of mixing, what I'm going to do is to develop the gluten in the dough. I'm just going to keep pulling it like this. This is easier to do if you have a cloth below, so I just put one below so it stays and it doesn't move too much. I'm actually just pulling it just like this. I'm going to do this may be for 2-3 minutes and you'll see by the end of it the dough will come together quite fast. I've been doing this for about two minutes now and you can see that the dough feels more smoother now. It's still really wet but at the same time, it sticks less onto your hand. That's good. Now what I'm going to do is just cover it and let it be for 1/2 an hour and then we'll start developing the dough. Just cover it with the wet cloth and set it aside for 1/2 an hour. It's been 30 minutes, let's have a look at the dough. You can see some bubbles on the dough; that is really good. It means the starter is working and the dough is fermenting. At this stage, I'll show you a few techniques of how to develop the gluten in the dough. Whenever we handle the sourdough, make sure to keep a bowl of water at hand and always dip your hands in the water so it doesn't stick to your hand. Now, on the surface as well I'll put a tiny bit of water so it doesn't stick there. Gently put it down, use your scraper, and it should just come out like that. Perfect. It'll be a little sticky, but don't worry about that. Now what we'll do is we'll just hold it like this, slap it, and push it back. We'll keep doing this maybe 50-60 times just so that it develops the structure in the dough. I'm literally just pulling it and pushing it back like that. You use your front two fingers and your thumb, and you do this. If at any point it sticks to your hand, make sure to dip your hands in the water. Perfect. I did this about 60-70 times. Now, just put a little bit of water on your scraper, and pull all the dough from the table. Just shape it into a ball. It'll still be sticky, but now it should have more structure. Just shape it into a ball like that. Perfect. Put your hands in the water. I'm going to show you. You see now it feels like it has more texture and it doesn't stick as much to your hands. Just make it into a ball, I'm going to put it back in the bowl for another 30 minutes, and then we'll start our stretch and folds. It's been 30 minutes and it's time to give the dough the first set of turns. Let's have a look at the dough first. See you have these air bubbles coming through, which is quite nice. This time we'll be giving about 20 turns. Stick into the center, and in this process, we'll be giving three times after every 1/2 an hour. As we progress with the turns, we'll reduce the number of turns so that we can capture all the gases inside the dough. Perfect. I can feel the dough feels more stronger now. If I lift it, you can see it doesn't stick to my hands that much and it has a smooth surface here, so that's great. Just set this aside and after 1/2 an hour, we'll give it one more series of stretch and folds. Just cover it with a wet cloth, and set it aside. After 30 minutes, let's have a look at the dough. You see it feels more stronger now. That's great. This time we're going to give 10 stretch and folds. Just wrap it around like that, put it in the bowl, and let's give it another set of turns after 30 minutes. It's been 30 minutes and it's time to give the final series of stretch and folds. If you look at the dough it feels really nice and light now. Just dip your hand in water and this time we'll be giving about six turns. Be super gentle with the dough because we don't want to defect any of those gases which have been built inside. Just roll it into a nice ball and you're going to set this aside for anywhere between 1-3 hours, depending on your starter and your room temperature because we want to develop gases at this stage. Just set it aside and I'll show you how it looks like after one hour. 13. Spelt Sourdough Loaf: Pre Shaping and Final Shaping: After one hour, let's have a look at the dough. That looks quite nice actually. It's risen quite well. But I want to it rise just a little bit more. I'd probably give it 30 minutes more then I can start reshaping the dough. After two hours of body fermentation let's have a look at the dough. You see it's risen really well. You can see air bubbles on top. When I move this, you see how the gases in it, I'm making it move like that, so it's nicely risen. This is perfect. Now, when you dig the dough out of the bowl, make sure do not dig acid too much. Be really gentle with it. We're going to be using a dough scraper to dig it out as well as put a little bit of flour on your surface because the dough is quite wet. This part of the process, we just going to reshape the dough. Just lift it like that so it gently falls down from the bowl. Because it's really wet, it will just come off really easily like that. Now what we'll do is put a little bit of flour on our hand and really quick just one here and just wrap it around like that. Lift it. Dust the flour away, we don't want too much flour on the surface. Just using the scraper, shape it into a bowl. Perfect. We don't want to disturb the dough too much at this stage. Just tuck it in a little bit. Perfect. See, you should get a smooth surface on the top. Now we're just going to rest this for about 30 minutes, and then we'll do the final shaping. What this does is that it makes a better loaf because the loaf is more tight up as well as the shaping stage is more easier. Because you already have a surface, so when we shape it we'll just flip it and we'll just self stitch it together. Just cover it with a cloth and set this aside. While our dough is resting, I'm going to show you the banneton we will be proofing the bread in. What I like doing is basically seasoning it. To season the banneton I'm going to be using a mixture, of course, rice flour and just plain flour. You can use plain flour as well, that's completely fine. But I like using a little bit of rice flour. What it does is that it prevents the bread from sticking. This is just a 50 percent blend, so it's just equal parts of rice flour and all purpose flour. What you do is just season it nicely because the dough is super wet. Just make sure that all the corners are nicely seasoned so it doesn't stick. Also when we ship the bread, we'll also be using the same flour mix. In some bannetons, you'll also find that there is a linen cloth here. That is also really nice to use. If you can find those bannetons, you can use them as well. If you can't find that you can also use hair nets. I've seen some people do that as well. Totally up to you how you want to do it. I'm going to set this aside now, and then I'll show you next how to shape the bread. It's been 30 minutes and now it's time to shape our dough. You can see that it's spread slightly and is nice and relaxed. I've got a nice surface on the top. Now, before you start shaping, make sure to season the top nicely and then just flip it over. Make sure they get off from the bench so it's not sticking. Flip it over, stretch it slightly. Now I'm going to show you how to stitch the dough. This is the method we use in the bakery quite often for really bad doughs. It's a little bit of an advance technique, but I'm sure you can learn it. Super easy, one corner in the center, just off any flour if you have. Then these two go in the center as well. The bottom as well goes in the center. Now we're going to stitch the dough, so something like this. You take the corner and you stitch it, so all the gases trapped inside. That looks so nice. You see how it's nicely stitched. All the gases are trapped inside. I'll finish it. What we going to do is we're going to flip it and then tuck it here. Really easy just tuck it in here and seal it nicely. Just tighten it a little bit. That's good. I know some bakers will pinch this, some bakers just leave it like that. It's completely up to you. I just like pinching it slightly just to seal it. Perfect. Now, before you put it nice amount of flour on top, make sure that this is rice flour and plain flour on it so it doesn't stick. Just do this in one go. Perfect. This goes in like that. Now you have two options here, either you can just proof it for anywhere between 1-3 hours and then bake it, or you can cold proof it overnight for anywhere between 12-24 hours. I think this is great nicely sealed, so I'm not going to stitch it. But if you want, you can actually just stitch it like that like we did in our previous loaf. We store this. I'm just going to put this in a bag and just basically take out all the air from the bag and just wrap it up and put it in the fridge. Let's put a little bit of flour on top and just shake it like that so it's seasons well. Now you can use any bag you want as long as there's no air which goes inside it. Let's put it inside. Take out all the air and just wrap it like that. Perfect. There shouldn't be any dry air going inside or otherwise it'll become dry. But this is good. Just put it in the fridge for 12-24 hours. 14. Spelt Sourdough Loaf: Scoring and Baking: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to bake this bread. This is the next day, it's about 7:00 AM right now. What we're going to do is preheat our Dutch oven for at least an hour. Once this is preheated, we'll take the bread out of the fridge, and then I'll show you how to score it and bake it. Just put this in the oven so it's nicely preheated. [NOISE] Let's put the Dutch oven here. Let me show you. If you open it, you should be able to see a lot of heat coming out of it, so that's nicely preheated. [NOISE] Let's take our bread out of the batter and let's score it. Our Dutch oven is nicely preheated and I wanted to show you the dough from yesterday. [NOISE] See that looks so good. It's proofed slightly, and it's perfectly ready to bake. Let's score it and bake it. Just gently take the dough out. It should just fall on its own. Perfect. [NOISE] What you do is if you see excess flour on the top, just dust it off because it's not that good to eat. Just makes it more neater as well. Perfect. Now [NOISE] when we score this bread, we do it at an angle like this and not like this. We go at an angle like this. Perfect. We can go a bit more deeper. [NOISE] See that depth? It's about half an inch deep, looks nice. Just [NOISE] take the bread and put it straight away in the Dutch oven. [NOISE] Put the bread in, and [NOISE] spray water. Spray water on your lid as well. [NOISE] Perfect. I'm going to bake this for 20 minutes at 250 degrees Celsius. After 20 minutes of baking, let's have a look at the bread. You can see that it split from here. It's formed a nice ear and it's nicely opened up from here and it's risen really well. Now we take off the lid and bake it for about 30 minutes and lower the temperature to about 220 degrees Celsius. The reason we do this is because we want the bread to bake internally, as well as get a lot of color on the top and on the sides as well. [NOISE] There's our final bread. It looks so nice. It's got such an amazing ear. When it comes out of the oven, what I like doing is just taking it out of the Dutch oven, [NOISE] and just putting it on the cooling rack so that it doesn't get a soggy crust on the bottom. I'm going to cool this down for at least two hours so that it can bake properly from inside and all the moisture can evaporate, and then I'll show you the texture from the inside. Our bread has been cooling down for two hours now, so it should feel completely cool to touch. The first thing I notice is that it's got such a nice ear. That you get if you shaped it really well and the gases are still inside the bread, as well as when you score it, you have to do it at an angle. When I scored it, the angle I showed you, if you follow that, you'll be able to get a really nice ear. With this, you can actually lift it. That's how old bakers used to do, they used to be able to lift the bread from the ear. This is a really good sign, an amazing side of bread. Perfect. Let's have a look at the bread from the inside, how the texture looks like. [NOISE] It looks so beautiful. You can see the open holes evenly distributed across the ground and this is exactly what you should be aiming for. Let's get a slice and see how the cram looks like. [NOISE] It's so soft. See how open that is? It springs back, really nice. Let's taste it. That is so nice. It's got such a soft texture. It's so good, see? So soft. We didn't even put any fat in it. 15. Sourdough FAQ's and Solutions: In this lesson, we'll be covering some of the most frequently asked questions I get on sourdough bread baking. The first one is that why is my bread really dense and heavy. Now this usually happens if the dough has not been fermented enough. It's basically not built enough gases inside it. When you actually bake it doesn't dry as much and it's really dense and it's not like really nice to eat. The second reason this can happen is that your starter dough wasn't active enough, make sure that a doubles in size when you feed it. If it doesn't double, just feed it again because you want your starter to be really active when you mix the dough. A a good way to test this is actually when you mixing the dough, just put it in water and see if it's floating on top. Also see if it's formed enough gases on the top of it. The next reason is that when we are shaping the dough we're really aggressive with the dough and actually deflates a lot of bubbles and a lot of good fermentation activity, which we've built up in the dough. Make sure not to be really aggressive when you're shaping and be really gentle with the dough when you're shaping as well. The last reason is that your oven wasn't hot enough. Make sure that you're Dutch oven is really hot and you get a really nice oven spring when you put the dough inside the big. But if you're baking on a baking steel, makes sure to preheat the oven really nicely so that the initial heat can hit the dough and it can rise very well. I hope this actually helps you basically improve your bread. The second most common question I get is that my bread actually just completely deflated and it looks like a pancake and it just doesn't feel right. The number one reason that happens is that the dough was over fermented. Now what happens is that the acidity in the dough, because since we are using wild yeast, what it does, it cuts through the gluten strands, and it basically collapses completely when you bake it. Make sure to use a starter which is not too acidic and also make sure do not over ferment the dough. If you're living in a tropical environment, make sure that the dough temperature is not too high because that will also over ferment the dough. Also make sure that the flour you're using has enough gluten content to be able to take that much hydration you are giving to the dough. If I use flour which has that 10 percent gluten content and if I make an 80 percent hydration, it will definitely collapse in the oven. Make sure to suit the hydration based on the flour you're using and not based on the recipe which you're following. Keep experimenting with the flour you use because every flour is different. Every flour will be able to observe different quantities of water. The next question I get most commonly is that my dough isn't fermenting or it's fermenting too slowly. Now, why this happens is because you are starter is not active enough or your dough temperature is not correct. If your dough temperature is too low and if you're baking in windows, your dough will not ferment fast. Also if your starter isn't active enough, it won't be able to give that amount of activity in the dough and form gases in the dough. Make sure to adjust your dough temperature as well as to feed your starter properly before you're using it. Next question I get is, can I measure the ingredients in cups? No, you can't do that. Anyways, you're dealing with wild yeast and you want to measure all the ingredients correctly. As a baker, we never use cups. We always use a digital scale. The final question I get most often is can I use all purpose flour? I can't actually access bread flour in the supermarket. Yes, you can actually use it. But just make sure to reduce the hydration in the dough because all purpose flour cannot actually absorb that much water. Make sure to reduce it slightly so say for example, if the recipe says 70 percent hydration, just reduce it down to 67 or 65 percent. Then just take it up from there based on how your dough reacts with the water you're using. I hope this helps you and if you have any more questions, feel free to message me and I will definitely answer it. 16. Conclusion: We finally come to the end of this class. I'm super, super happy with all the progress you've made, and I'm really proud and I'm really excited to see the results of your sourdough experiments. Now, if you have any question, feel free to message me anytime, and I will definitely get back to you because sourdough baking is a journey. Don't expect to get perfect breads the first time you make them because it needs a lot of practice and you also need to learn that this is something really natural, it's something really unpredictable, so as much as you practice, you'll get more control over the breads. All these techniques are super useful if you're making other recipes as well, so definitely use them in those. I also wanted to say that if you could follow me on my social media channels as well, so that we can basically stay in touch. Also, make sure to check out some of my other classes as well. I'm pretty sure they'll help you. Thank you so much again for attending this class.