Cooking Cheap

I improvised a sourdough bread recipe, I’m sure it’s not unique.

[Day 1]
Start with a tablespoon of starter, add 1 oz of water and 1 oz of unbleached bread flour, mix well and if you’re like me, forget you did that for 12 hours.

[Day 2]
Add 3 oz of water and 3 os unbleached bread flour and when it doubles (not many hours – 4 maybe?) mix up the following:

8 oz of the 50/50 sourdough starter from above (i.e. all of it)
6.25 oz of water
5 oz of bread flour
5 oz whole wheat bread flour
1 Tsp Kosher salt (1/2 tsp table salt?)
1 or 2 Tbl of honey. I didn’t measure. More than 1 Tbl though

In a bowl, mix the starter and water, add honey and salt and stir well to distribute all those things. Add the flour, mix until bored (minute or two) and let set for 15 or 20 minutes.

With wet hands, knead in the salt if you forgot it. Hey! It could happen. Skip this step if you’ve been paying attention.

Cover, stretch and fold dough every 30 minutes 3 or 4 times or 5. Put in a oiled covered bowl to rise until doubled or better, unless it looks for feels like it’s about to break down. Four hours if you need to a number but my starter and your starter will be different.

I’m going to put it in the fridge (the retard phase) because I don’t want to be baking at 3:00AM. The next steps are dividing, shaping. final rise and baking. I’m leaning towards a loaf pan but I could lean somewhere else tomorrow.

There’s no fat in this recipe, it’s a bit higher in hydration than my 70% but the whole wheat sucks up water, and the honey could slow down or alter the sour critters. Or not.

The bread turned out fine. Good enough to freeze but not really good enough to rave about. Just OK. More salt might be needed.