RECIPES: A Smallbone Sourdough using the Ledbury Studio Wolf Oven

We are excited to be starting a new recipes instalment of our blog. Our first recipe is:

A Smallbone Sourdough using the Ledbury Studio Wolf Oven, by Sue Smallbone

I base my sourdough on a Vanessa Kimbell recipe and technique.

Ingredients: 

325 g of water

100 g sourdough starter (1:1)

500 g flour – At the moment I am using 300 g of strong white bread flour, 175 g of Wessex Mill Cobber Bread Flour and 25 g of Shipton Mill Stoneground wholemeal flour.

8-10 g of salt

Let’s start!

Feed the 100g of sourdough starter with 50g of rye flour and just over 50 g of warm water.

You must now leave the starter to get active and at least double in size. This normally takes 2-3 hours depending on temperature of the room.

Measure out water and if the starter floats when added, then you know it is active enough to make a good rise.

Mix all the ingredients together and leave for 1 hour and a half, before you do the first lift, stretch and fold. To do this, lift and fold your dough and do a quarter turn, then repeat 3 times.

Leave for 30 mins do a 2^nd lift and fold as above

Repeat after 30 mins, then repeat again after another 30 mins.

I usually do 4 more lift and folds in the last hour, 15 minutes apart.

Once you have completed your lift and folds, shape the dough lightly, place in Banneton, cover with plastic or a damp tea towel to prove for a 50% rise which should take between 1-2 hours. Then put in the fridge until the next morning

The beauty of this process of lifting, folding the bread and repeating 8 times is, you can adjust the time intervals to suit your day. Sometimes if I am short of time I do the lift and fold process every 15 minutes.

Now, with a normal oven I would:

Pre heat oven to 250c, reduce the temp to 220c and bake for 30-35 mins in a casserole with the lid on. Then take off the lid and reduce temp to 180c, spray with water and bake for another 15 mins.

However, I used Wolf’s Built in M series Contemporary Black Glass Single Oven. Wolf ovens can reach a higher temperature, than most ovens. I put the temperature up to 275c, applied the bake setting, and was able to reduce the cooking time to 20 mins!

 

And voila!!