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Yohan Ferrant's Do Nothing Sourdough Bread

While sourdough bread baking is a time consuming process, it's not exactly a lot of work. It's mostly a little bit of work, followed by a much longer period of do nothing, wash/rinse/repeat. I've baked a dozen+ times during the lockdown and the process I've settled on yields pretty darned good results. So now is the perfect time to mess with it... 😆😆😆 I never turn down an opportunity to be even more lazy.

I've been very intrigued with Yohan Ferrant's low inoculation, do nothing process. Basically incorporate, wait, shape, bake. I will try to execute this process with basic, big box store purchased ingredients available anywhere.

Anyone try this? Any advice/tips?

 

Alacrity59

Wanting for wisdom
I've made a lot of bread starting from a fairly early age. Much of it, at 60 years of age, I can tell by eye and feel what needs to be done. Sourdough is a new journey. I know very little. I am amazed at one set of instructions. It kinda goes . . . you need to take two table spoons of starter from your fridge. Add some flour and water to the amount you need for a loaf and let it sit a few hours to get active. Add to your flour with some salt and start the waiting. . . 3 or so hours for each rise.

Actually that is not terrible. With two rises, buns I make maybe take 4 hours. . . with a heating pad helping.
 
That's for the upload.... I'm giving it a try. I love sourdough.

I mixed up the dough around noontime today. Now I'm at the "do nothing" portion of the recipe for ~24Hrs.
  • 240g whole wheat flour
  • 160g bread flour
  • 5g starter (tiny bit more than ~1% inoculation)
  • 360g room temperature water (90% hydration)
  • 8g salt
Here's what the dough looks like.
 
Here's my dough after 24 Hrs of "Do Nothing" and 1 stretch and fold. It expanded quite a bit but maybe not quite 2x. It's still wet but quite airy. Like a mature starter.
 
After 1Hr of "Do Nothing" rest, I dusted a proofing basket with some rice flour, shaped, and placed the dough in it. Handling as little as possible. Dutch oven heating up now. Ready to bake in another Hr.
 
Resulting boule. 20 min in a dutch oven with the lid on at 500*F, 20 min with the lid off at 450*F. Some observations. It has less ~1/2 the oven spring my normal, 20% inoculation, multiple stretch and fold boules. I did attempt to score the dough but with such a wet dough and without the surface tension of gluten development, it was sort of hard. It does sound hollow when I tap the bottom but it's definitely going to be denser. I didn't mention it previously but the dough smelled just like starter. Sour and boozy. Them yeast cultures worked hard over 24 HRs.

I'll add a shot of the crumb in a couple of hours after cool down.

 

kelbro

Alfred Spatchcock
Resulting boule. 20 min in a dutch oven with the lid on at 500*F, 20 min with the lid off at 450*F. Some observations. It has less ~1/2 the oven spring my normal, 20% inoculation, multiple stretch and fold boules. I did attempt to score the dough but with such a wet dough and without the surface tension of gluten development, it was sort of hard. It does sound hollow when I tap the bottom but it's definitely going to be denser. I didn't mention it previously but the dough smelled just like starter. Sour and boozy. Them yeast cultures worked hard over 24 HRs.

I'll add a shot of the crumb in a couple of hours after cool down.


Waiting.... :)
 
So the oven string was weak and the resulting boule is dense (compare to crumb on my "normal" boules below).
Still edible. The bread is VERY sour. Bordering on being tart. I'm going to try and work on this recipe a bit. It's been a bit cold here in the NorthEast and my kitchen temperatures are in the mid to high 60s. I might get a proofing container with clear markings so I can tell when the dough has at least doubled in size. I wouldn't call it a success but not a failure either. We need more lazy guys working on this so we can nail the process.

 

kelbro

Alfred Spatchcock
I'm lazy enough to try this some time :) Fishing and camping this weekend so maybe next week...

I have a sour starter and a not-so-sour starter. I'll try the not-so-sour one first.
 
I've tried making sour dough bread several times, but I've given up. It's a crap shoot. One time it's flat, another time it's perfect, and another time it's inedible. It all depends on the starter and the starter is always changing. Commercial bakeries go to great lengths to keep their starter sterile so they get predictable results. I don't think you can do that at home. But I'll keep following this thread. I may learn something. I'd love to make great sourdough bread.
 
I've tried making sour dough bread several times, but I've given up. It's a crap shoot. One time it's flat, another time it's perfect, and another time it's inedible. It all depends on the starter and the starter is always changing. Commercial bakeries go to great lengths to keep their starter sterile so they get predictable results. I don't think you can do that at home. But I'll keep following this thread. I may learn something. I'd love to make great sourdough bread.
I've been pretty fortunate in that my starter has never been that fussy. To me, the most consistent results have been when the dough passes the "window pane" test. Some days, the dough takes forever to come together and may require 6 or even more stretch and folds (or coil folds) to pass the test. The bread varies each time but pass the test = good bread.
 
I always use very low inoculation 1% with a bit more than 80% hydration. I have notice that the dough doubles after 12, 14 hours in the summer in the NW of England. I don't time it, I take a probe and put it in a little glass jar and mark it with an elastic band. I do a few stretch and folds at the beginning, maybe 3, why not? I enjoy doing them. Don't give up: it is very lazy bread
 

Alacrity59

Wanting for wisdom
I've been using the Ben Starr method. I've been making 2 or 3 loves of sourdough bread a week and never bought a loaf from the store this year. Zero waste of flour. One loaf takes me less than 15 minutes of work.

See his stuff on YouTube . . . If it would help I can put on some pics of how I do it.
 
Best sourdough I've had was a California brand, I grew up with it so perhaps that was just what I became used to?

Since then, anything I've had that calls itself sourdough was not as enjoyable. Or, I got older, crankier, and less tolerant.
 

kelbro

Alfred Spatchcock
I've tried these and they are in fact easier and do not taste bad at all. They just don't have the gluten development or spongey-ness that we like. My process isn't a lot more work and my loaves can pass for SF sourdough.
 

Old Hippie

Somewhere between 61 and dead
Our weekly Pullman sourdough multigrain loaf is pretty simple. Start in the evening, let the sponge work overnight. Add more flour, some salt and stuff next morning, and put in the fridge for 24 hours. Shape, rise, bake on morning of the third day. EZ;PZ.

With sourdough you have two things to watch. If you started with a commercial yeast it will have a tendency to grow up quite fast; faster than the lactobacillus souring bacteria can grow. If you have a wild yeast, it may only grow up as fast as the lacto if you start with a fairly high percentage of starter in your sponge. With wild or with commercial yeast that's had some time to adapt to your crock, I don't favour low-inoculation rates because the yeast won't be quick enough to keep up with the lactobacillus, leading to an unbalanced sour taste in the bread.

I find that it's always a good idea to get out the starter and pump it up a little on the morning before I make the sponge. That way the starter is roaring along by evening and ready for a sturdy meal.

I lately have been hydrating with whey from either yogurt or skyr. I like skyr whey better, being somewhat butter flavour anyway. I use skyr to culture cream for butter, so the butter plus the whey in the bread is really nice. I have also used fresh buttermilk in the bread, but while it makes an OK loaf it causes other problems.

The main issue is that buttermilk is not scalded before being added to the dough (to preserve the lactobacillus and other wee beasties), so the proteases are not denatured. That can lead to an over-fermented and gummy crumb as the buttermilk proteases go to work on the protein in the flour. Using whey avoids that, as the milk was originally scalded before being inoculated with yogurt culture.

O.H.
 
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