#DOUGH SCORING KNIFE SERIES#

This dough loves a warm ambient environment. The target final dough temperature (FDT) is 78☏ (25☌). My Best Sourdough Recipe Vitals Total Dough Weight If you're brand new to baking sourdough, check out my Beginner's Sourdough Bread recipe it has in-depth information on every step in the baking process. When trying new flour, remember to hold back more water than you might otherwise, and then slowly add it in at the end of mixing or throughout bulk fermentation. Of course, as I mentioned before, try whatever is local first (sadly, my source for local, organic flour is no longer) and what you like. Nevertheless, I find myself ordering a box of it here and there and enjoying the results every time.

I have consistently made incredible loaves with Giusto's flour I only wish it was organic. I’ve also had great success with King Arthur Baking flour. I have baked some great bread with Hayden Flour Mills (including this wonderful white Sonora Sourdough bread), Central Milling, and Giusto’s. I’ve tried a lot of flour out there (and am an avid user of freshly milled flour), indeed not everything there is, but I’ve ordered enough now that the UPS guy thinks I might have a bakery in my backyard. While the actual formula for my best sourdough recipe is simply a mix of flour, water, salt, and levain, there are many nuances here to pay close attention to here are a few key things to successfully making this bread: In fact, I bake this so often that my freezer has an entire shelf lined with pre-sliced loaves wrapped and in bags labeled pane perfetto 2. I have a special place for whole wheat bread, and taste-wise, it might make me want to call that my favorite one day, but the versatility of this bread is pretty hard to beat. This bread is the bread that I want to make the most often, the one my family asks for the most often, and the one I share most often. I’m not claiming this recipe will yield the perfect loaf every single time, but I dare say it comes the closest for me-and that’s exciting. Maybe the actual recipe for this bread isn’t the most important part, but rather, the lessons and insights learned along the way as I continually hone my baking proficiency. Yes it’s excessive in some way, but there’s an excessiveness to ambition as well. I’ve taken my best sourdough recipe from its most nascent form to its current stage and can trace through the years each change to its formula or process - and I’m sure I’ll be changing things well into the future as it continues to evolve - a work-in-progress. Isn’t that the definition of a craft and the relentless honing required?

I sometimes revisit a discussion I had with a few readers of this site and their comments: “bread is just bread, it’s something to be eaten and is something life-giving, isn’t that enough?” I agree, but when something becomes a passion for you it’s important to set lofty goals and get excited when breakthroughs are made. Calling this post “my best sourdough recipe” is a lofty claim, but honestly, I do believe this is the best bread I've made thus far. That’s one of the greatest things about bread: it can taste and look dramatically different just by changing the two hands that create it.

This bread is one that doesn’t entirely taste like anything else I’ve had, and yet, still employs many of the same processes and ingredients. It’s taken on and lost traits from many great bakers out there, borrowing from their inspiration and giving me a direction to raise this bread into something of my own. It has developed a personality of its own as I’ve expanded my baking repertoire and investigated the many facets of baking naturally leavened sourdough. My best sourdough recipe has grown since then.

#DOUGH SCORING KNIFE SERIES#

Its parent-if you could call it that-was originally Chad Robertson’s Tartine loaf with his liquid levain, brought to life, not with intensive kneading, but rather a series of folds during bulk fermentation. This bread was born when I first got my hands dirty with flour and water. I’ve baked this loaf, or some variant of it, so many times I’ve lost count.

Dough scoring knife