Bread in its most simple form
The Recipe
Ingredients
Flour
Water
Salt
Sourdough Starter
Baker’s Percentages
The recipe for sourdough bread, or any bread for that matter, can be boiled down to what we like to call baker’s percentages. That is, all the ingredients in a recipe are added in proportion to the amount of flour by weight. The proportion of flour to the other ingredients creates the hydration level of the bread (how wet the dough is).
For example:
a 70% hydration sourdough recipe may have -
1000g of flour
700g of water
100g of sourdough starter
20g of salt
Process
Trial and error and baking by feel
Whilst the ingredients that make up sourdough bread are simple, the end result is bigger than the sum of its parts. This is due to technique that is required to make the bread.
Unlike many other bread doughs you may have worked with, sourdough is a high hydration dough, therefore it is very wet, sticky, and difficult to work with.