Quicker sourdough bread/recipe

Commercial yeast and your levain can create the loaf you want in the available time. 

Oops! Someone beat me to it. I often start with SD and use dry yeast to speed it up to meet my requirements. OR Use a preferment mixed up the evening before, mix the dough the next am,knead to windowpane, rise, proof and bake. Using a preferment (starter,flour,water) or even a soaker ( just flour and water with a pinch of yeast or tablespoon of starter) and a preferment can make for a pretty fast rising, flavorful loaf.

First, you need an active starter, but that is not too hard. Feed your starter in the evening and use the leftover to initiate a levain.  The flour in the levain should be about 25% of the total flour in the loaf (loaves) you are about to make. Weigh the flour that you use to mix the levain, calculate 2% of the weight of the flour.  Mix the leftover starter with the flour and an equal amount of water and let if ferment overnight someplace warm (like 75-80°F).  Weigh your levain after you have mixed it and covered it tightly with plastic wrap.  Subtract the 2% of added flour from the weight of the bowl + levain + plastic wrap.  This is your target weight.  Don't mix your dough until the levain weight is equal to or less than the target weight.  The appearance will be active with lots of bubbles that have fallen and if your plastic wrap was put on tightly it will be puffed up into a dome.

So if you want to make 1600g of 80% hydration dough with 25% prefermented flour and a levain with 100% hydration and you have 27g of starter left over after feeding, you would mix 27:211:211 to get 449g of levain which (after bowl and scraper and spoon losses) will give you 440g of usable levain after an overnight fermentation.  Add 483g of warm (100°F is not too warm) water and 659g of strong flour, mix, autolyse for 20 min, add 18g of salt and mix to whatever level of gluten development you are comfortable with (by hand or by machine - I always do it by machine, and mix to near full gluten development). Bulk ferment for 1:15, divide, rest 30 min, shape, proof for about 1:30 (longer if your kitchen is cool).  You have now spent 30 min to measure, autolyse, and mix, 1:15 for BF, 30 min rest, 10 min to shape, and 1:30 proof so you are close to your desired timeline. For a 45 min oven cycle and another hour to let it cool, you have bread in 6 hrs that is very good.

If you want a spreadsheet to help calculate weights for variable levain hydration and dough hydration and total batch weight and salt %, you can download this Excel file .  Instructions are on the second spreadsheet in the workbook.

If your preferment should be 25% of your total flour isn’t that 400 grams (meaning 800 grams of 100% hydration)?

If your preferment should be 25% of your total flour isn’t that 400 grams (meaning 800 grams of 100% hydration)?

Fromartz's Stirato is a great one-day bread.  Uses yeast, with optional dollop of SD starter thrown in for flavor.  I usually add unfed starter straight from the fridge.  Makes a great sandwich loaf.  Takes about 6 hours at my house with 65-68 degree household temps.