Flour Water Salt Yeast

If you bake simple white bread (using the foundation dough) every few days, one way to gradually reduce the quantity of fresh commercial yeast in your dough and edge towards bread leavened by natural yeasts, is to keep back 400g of dough when you reach the dividing stage, ready to prove it. Place the portion of dough in a bowl, covered, in your fri

This can be done by keeping the dough well floured or by keeping your hands wet (wet dough will not stick to wet hands). This kind of wet dough does not get rolled so much as gently folded. Again, the objective is to retain as much gas as possible so that in the secondary fermentation, the proofing stage, the newly generated gas will stretch the do

Now that the dough is beginning to rise, you want to slow down the fermentation a little, so that the dough can mature gently. To do this, put it in the bottom of the fridge for a further 2 days. If you like your sourdough more sour than sweet (personally, I don’t) you can leave it for 4 to 5 days.