A Loaf Worth Getting Up For

There is a particular sort of quiet in a farmhouse kitchen before the day properly starts: the range ticking over, boots drying by the door, and on the worktop a bowl of dough that has been quietly working its way through the night. Sourdough bread is not complicated. It asks for only four things — flour, water, salt and time — but it rewards patience with a loaf you would happily put on any table.

That suits country life. You are not tied to a bakery schedule or a Saturday morning run into town; instead you mix when it fits between feeding stock, mucking out or a spell in the garden, and let the bread do the rest. Slow fermentation does more than build flavour. It begins to break down the starches and phytic acid in the grain, which many people find makes a long-proved loaf far easier to digest than a fast, commercial one.

Making Your First Starter

Forget buying a powder or a sachet. A starter is simply flour and water left to cultivate the wild yeasts already in your flour and in the air of your kitchen. Use a clean 500ml jar and stir with a wooden spoon or a clean fork.

• Day 1: mix 50g of wholemeal or rye flour with 50g of lukewarm water. Cover loosely and leave somewhere warm, around 20°C.
• Days 2–5: each morning, tip away half the mixture and stir in another 50g flour and 50g lukewarm water.
• Days 5–10: you should see bubbles, a rise after feeding, and a faintly sour, beery smell. Rye speeds this along noticeably.

If your kitchen is cold — a common complaint in old stone farmhouses — stand the jar in the airing cupboard or beside the range, out of direct heat. If a dark liquid forms on top, that is alcohol, a sign of hunger; pour it off and feed again. If it smells like nail varnish, it has been left too long without attention and is best started afresh.

The Basic Farmhouse Loaf

Once your starter reliably doubles within six hours of feeding, you are ready. This makes one good-sized round or oval loaf.

• 500g strong white flour, or 400g white with 100g wholemeal
• 350g water, at room temperature
• 100g active starter
• 10g fine sea salt

Mix the flour and water and leave for half an hour — the autolyse — while you get on with something else. Add the starter and salt, then work the dough until it comes together. Resist the urge to add much more flour; a wetter dough gives a more open crumb. Over the next three hours, give it four sets of stretch and folds, spaced roughly forty minutes apart: lift one side of the dough, stretch it upwards and fold it over the middle, turn the bowl, and repeat all the way round. Between folds, cover the bowl and leave it somewhere warm. Once it has risen by roughly half and feels lively and domed, shape it into a tight ball and place it seam-side up in a floured, cloth-lined bowl or banneton.

Fitting the Bake Around the Day

Here is where rural life has the advantage. Cover the shaped loaf and put it in the fridge overnight. The cold slows fermentation to a crawl, so a loaf tucked away after evening chores will be ready for the oven after morning rounds. Take it out while the oven heats — it wants an hour to lose the chill, and it should look puffed but still springy when you press it lightly with a fingertip.

Steam, Heat and a Proper Crust

Preheat the oven to 230°C with a heavy cast-iron pot, cloche or baking stone inside for at least half an hour. If you are using a pot, turn the loaf in, slash the top with a sharp blade in one confident cut, replace the lid and bake for 20 minutes. Then take the lid off and give it another 20 to 25 minutes, until the crust is a deep, burnished brown.

Without a lidded pot, slide the loaf onto a hot stone and pour a mug of boiling water into a roasting tin on the shelf below to make steam. The steam keeps the crust soft long enough for the loaf to spring, then the dry heat does the rest. Either way, the loaf is done when it sounds hollow underneath and the internal temperature reads 96°C or above. Leave it on a rack for at least an hour before cutting, however tempting it looks.

When Things Go Wrong

• Dense and heavy: usually an underactive starter or too short a prove. Feed the starter twice before your next bake.
• Flat and sprawling: the dough has gone too far. A shorter bench rest, or a colder fridge, will sort it.
• Gummy crumb: cut too soon. The crumb keeps setting as it cools.

Keep your starter in the fridge between bakes and feed it once a week with equal weights of flour and water. If you want a safety net, spread a thin layer on baking parchment, let it dry out completely, and keep the flakes in a sealed jar — a backup that will revive with a little warm water whenever you need it. A sourdough habit, once started, tends to stay in the kitchen for good.