Help: Sourdough Recipe for a Working Man with Kids? :)

This is the recipe I used last weekend - San Joaquin Sourdough. (Hopefully that link works).

It lets you retard for 21 hours in the fridge.  I didn't wait that long but it still turned out great and tasted great!

You'll find something that works for your schedule.

This:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44111/easy-sourdough-part-1

is an overnight sourdough - but rather than get up at (say) 5:30am to finish it off for 9am, shape, put in basket then put in the fridge (in a bag). Remove from fridge when ready and into the oven. Or go direct to fridge in the morning, then at 2pm, out of the fridge, shape/prove/bake.

-Gordon

You could try my recipe. Hopefully I'll provide it properly :)

What I am baking is a seedy bread with wholemeal wheat, wholemeal rye and strong wheat flours and lots and lots of seeds. I used to bake two loaves once a week and this was enough for a family of three, but we ate a lot and it could be enough for four as well. It stays fresh for 5-6 days as well and you can freeze it.

• 600g whole weat flour
• 300g whole rye flour
• 150g strong flour
• 1050g water
• 225g sourdough
• 25g sugar
• 25g salt

Seeds (you can do your own to taste, this one is high in energy and mainly dominated by black onion, if you remove it, sesame will take the lead):

• 100g pumpkin
• 100g sunflower
• 100g sesame
• 100g linseed
• 10g black onion

I usually take about 70g of seeds and put it aside to sprinkle the loaves. I do not recommend sprinkling with black onion as it becomes a bit bitter when roasted.

My schedule would be:

1. In the evening: prepare the sourdough: 100g wholemeal wheat + 100g water + 25g starter (mine is 100% hydration, i tried both stiffer and runnier, all worked well)
2. In the morning mix it all up (if you use mixer, don't cont on the dough hook)
3. Grease the baking tins (I use bread tins from Ikea, about 10cmx30cmx8cm) and put the dough inside. It gives you about 1350g of dough per tin, which should leave about 3-4cm space from the top. Sprinkle with the seeds.
4. Leave it till it rises to reach the level of the tin. In winter it can take up to 12h, in summer it can do it in 4-5h. You can also put it in the slightly heated (and turned off) oven to speed it up. If it overproves - well, it's dense anyway so I don't think you'll spot much of a difference.
5. Bake in 160-180C with a fan for 70-80 minutes

What you and up having is a very dense bread full of aromas and flavor, high in energy. We often call it a brick. You can easily hurt someone with it.

My kids (2 and 4) love it, they are crazy about the roasted seeds on top. My friends like it as well. Just bear in mind that it's not a light product :)

I've been using slight variant of this recipe for months now and it can be easily adapted to almost any schedule.  If you follow David's approach you need somewhat less than 2 hours for the final proof and shaping after it comes out of the refrigerator.  I make 500g batards and backing time for those is only 30 minutes.

Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough works for that schedule.  Not sure that's the schedule he recommends, but I often mix the night before, retard overnight and shape/bake the next day.  I find the overnight retard really helps the flavor of the loaf and it often fits into my schedule better too.

ingredient Challenge bread.  Make the levaim and let it sit overnight.  Put it in the fridge the next morning.  The mix he next evening just like your schedule  SD requires you to have the levain ready to go but all you have to do is take a bit of starter on Sunday afternoon and feed it to the weight required for the bread and let it sit out overnight (12 nhours is best) and then put it in the fridge.  GThe  follow your schedule.

I was joking about Lucy's challenge but,  it too would work as would any SD recipe if you have the levain ready to go the day before.  Sprouted bread would require you to sprout then on Saturday Morning and grind them Sunday morning before building the levain.  So just about anything is possible with your schedule - so good luck with it nd

Happy SD baking 

I have been working on a recipe for a few weeks, and got it pretty much where I want it to fit into my schedule.  You can use any recipe you like, the critical things are to track the amount of sourdough, the dough temp when you are done mixing, and the room temp during bulk ferment , then bulk ferment in a straight sided container so you can accurately measure the increase in volume at the end of 18 hours and keep notes of the results.  If it overproofs in the 18 hour bulk ferment, you need to either decrease the starter or decrease the room temp -  while a fridge works, that is pretty extreme, for me the garage was cooler than the house, and that worked out to be the right temp, but you could alway experiment with a  cooler that you throw just a few ice cubes in.  Remember that you don't need a very dramatic change in temp to change the results since the bulk ferment is so long.   If it doesn't ferment enough, you want to find a warmer place to store it during bulk ferment, or increase the amount of starter.  It took me a bunch of tries to get the timing and amounts of starter right, but once I got that dialed in, it became pretty consistent.